The Hole Story
by SimoneSez
Summary: An important sabotage mission goes bust, the Germans are just about to find the emergency tunnel, Major Hochstetter is on the prowl, and Colonel Crittendon arrives.  Obviously, this just isn't Hogan's day.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **_This story includes my OC of Underground agent Bluebird (a 2011 Papa Bear nominee for Best Original Character) in a supporting role. For those who haven't read my earlier work, Bluebird is a non-girlie-girl working with Hogan's operation who thinks of herself as just one of the boys, as do the POWs. For those who've already read my previous story, hopefully you will enjoy hearing a little more from her._

**September 1942**

There was about to be one less railroad bridge in Germany.

"Hurry up, Carter!" Newkirk urged. The darkness of the woods and the stillness of the night weren't doing a thing for his buzzing nerves; it was bloody dangerous out there and it didn't do to let one's guard down for a moment. His eyes swept the woods every few seconds, alert for any possible threat. A light snow had fallen earlier in the evening, just enough to show their footprints, and to make kneeling to do the job distinctly unpleasant.

Beside him, Carter stripped an inch of insulation from the ends of the two wires with his teeth. "I'm doing the best I can!" He then began to twist the bare ends around the two terminals on the plunger. "Haste makes waste, y'know."

"I'll remind 'em of that when they stand us up against the wall and start tyin' the blindfolds on!" A sudden sound from nearby made Newkirk spin sharply forty-five degrees to his right, and his finger tightened minutely on the trigger of his pistol.

"You might want to keep your voice down," Carter reminded him.

"Oh, thank you _very_ much."

A nearby birdcall, which wasn't a real birdcall, was followed by Kinch's subdued whisper coming from behind a nearby thicket of scrub brush. "He's right, Newkirk; put a sock in it! They can hear you in town!"

The Englishman lowered his gun, more relieved than he cared to admit, then Kinch and Bluebird joined them in the clearing, both of them dressed head to toe in black, exactly as Newkirk and Carter were. "Well, it's about time... where've you two been?"

"We eloped," the female Underground agent replied. "Where do you _think _we were?"

"We've got the charge on the northbound span of the bridge set to blow," Kinch reported. "And here the two of _you _are still horsing around... can we finish this _tonight_, you think?"

"Gimme another two minutes," Carter said.

"Another two minutes and you'll be on overtime. We've gotta get outta here!"

"You go ahead; we'll catch up."

Kinch frowned. "I don't like the sound of that."

"That makes two of us," Newkirk added.

"I just need two minutes," Carter repeated, still fiddling with the wires on the plunger assembly. "Then you two blow your half of the bridge and we'll blow ours, and we'll meet you back at the tunnel entrance."

The sudden grinding of a truck engine in low gear made them all stop bickering and hunker down in the bushes even lower. Then came a flash of headlights, and the rattle of tires crossing the crude gravel road bed that ran parallel to the railroad tracks.

"There goes that patrol again," Kinch said. "They know something's up."

"My blood pressure," Newkirk nodded. "I coulda told you that before."

"Carter, you might not _have _two minutes. That patrol's awful close."

The ends of the wire slipped from Carter's unsteady fingers. "I _need_ it, okay?" He took a deep breath, licked his parched lips and tried again to make the necessary connection to the terminals. "And I might as well tell you right now that I don't work all that well under stress... you know…?"

"Yeah, yeah, all right." Kinch glanced at Bluebird, waiting at his elbow and apparently trying to hurry Carter along by sheer force of her will. "What do you think?"

"Isn't it supposed to be all for one and one for all?"

"That was for three musketeers... there are _four _of us."

"Go on," Newkirk told them directly. "We'll be two minutes behind you; Bob's yer uncle."

"Okay," Kinch nodded reluctantly. "We'll hold you to that." He gestured for Bluebird to precede him, and the two of them moved off into the dark forest.

Newkirk briefly considered swapping places with Carter to deal with the wires himself. Andrew knew his stuff when it came to explosives, there was no doubt about that, but once he allowed nerves to trip him up a little bit it was often all downhill from there. The question was, was a man with shaky hands better off with dynamite in them, or a loaded gun? More than likely, the best idea would have been to let Carter go back to the north span with Bluebird and keep Kinch here to finish the rigging on this side. Too late now.

"Aw, shucks…" Carter muttered under his breath.

Newkirk felt his teeth clench of their own accord. "_Carter_…" barely made it out of one corner of his mouth.

"I'll get it, I'll _get _it…"

"I'm worried we're _both _gonna get it!"

oo O oo

The periscope concealed in the rain barrel just outside Barracks 2 provided a direct line of sight to the front gate, a few dozen feet of barbed-wire fence on either side, and the road just beyond it. LeBeau had been keeping a lookout for the past hour, ever since dusk had fallen, off and on… off when the searchlights passed over the barrel or when one of the guards walked by, but on the rest of the time. There had been a lot of unusual activity over by the main gate on the other side of the fence since late that afternoon, but since the prisoners had been confined to the barracks for the past twenty-four hours they had been unable to get a closer look.

"Anything?" Colonel Hogan asked from the doorway of his private quarters.

"_Non, __Colonel_." The corporal kept his eyes to the lenses concealed in the twin faucets as he spoke. "I can see a lot of motion out there but there isn't enough light to make out the details. A half-dozen at least… maybe as many as ten men. But I can't see what they're doing."

"Having them out there in the first place is bad enough; having them out there when we've got two teams trying to get back _in_ is about as bad as it gets."

"You think we should have waited to blow up the Reismacher Bridge?"

Hogan shook his head. "The munitions train due through that pass later on is too important a target; we had to take the chance. But we may have to lie low for a while after tonight… at least until we can figure out what it is they're doing out there by the wire."

"Maybe Klink knows something."

Hogan couldn't resist a smirk. "You just used the words 'Klink' and 'knows something' in the same sentence. Whose side are you on?"

The muffled tapping sound signifying that someone down below in the tunnel was requesting permission to come up had their undivided attention right away. Hogan crossed the barracks and hit the hidden panel on the rail with the heel of his hand; the lower bunk lifted and the ladder descended with the familiar creak of pulleys and wires. In seconds Kinch was stepping over the rail and onto the barracks floor, with Bluebird directly behind him.

"How'd it go?" Hogan was never sure why he asked things like that; he knew he was about to get a report anyway.

This time, though, Kinch looked unsure how to start. "Well… nothing that doesn't have wings is gonna be crossing that river headed northbound anytime real soon."

"What about southbound? Where are Carter and Newkirk?"

"They're not back yet?" The usually calm and collected staff sergeant was looking a little worried. Hogan didn't like that look on _anybody_ who was one of the 'good guys', but particularly not on Kinch.

"So where _are _they?" LeBeau joined the conversation.

"Me and Bluebird evaded a patrol in the woods and got our half of the operation rigged to blow. When we checked in with those two, Carter said he needed two more minutes…"

"…but we never heard the other half of the bridge go up after we set ours off," Bluebird finished. "We were hoping Carter and Newkirk would be here."

"Well, they're _not_," Hogan said, albeit unnecessarily; they could _see_that, and LeBeau had just confirmed it as well. "What kind of patrol? _Wehrmacht_, Gestapo?"

"We didn't get a close enough look."

Hogan folded his arms and set his mouth in a firm, hard line. "Well, it looks like Newkirk and Carter _did_."


	2. Chapter 2

Hogan would have been relieved to know that the situation out in the woods near the surviving half of the Reismacher Bridge wasn't as bad as it might have been.

Still, it wasn't good.

Carter's 'two minutes' had come and gone, and he was finally almost finished making the proper connections to the detonator, which they were now just about ready to set off. Newkirk had used those two minutes to observe one more slow pass of that truck on the dirt road paralleling the tracks, and to begin the unenviable process of starting to watch his life pass before his eyes. On top of everything else, he was afraid there wouldn't be time to get to the best parts. Both of them heard and saw the north span of the bridge explode in a burst of heat, light, and resulting rubble, as expected. But just as Carter gripped the plunger to blow the southbound span to bits, the beam from a powerful flashlight found them and they both heard a cold, authoritative voice shout "_Halt!_"

Halting was out of the question. The two of them dropped everything but the handgun and took off into the cover of the forest without a second thought, as machine-gun fire peppered the damp ground just behind their fleeing heels. It would be a lousy night to wind up in a grave, the Englishman thought to himself as he dogged Carter dodging and weaving amongst the trees. But maybe the best they could hope for would be to get out of digging their own.

Two men carrying very little who knew the area well could manage to outdistance soldiers in heavy boots carrying machine guns. That was good. Running into a second group of heavily-armed soldiers directly in front of them was bad. Carter stopped short when he recognized the danger, and Newkirk plowed into him from behind. There was nowhere else to go except…

"Hey, we just _mined_ that bridge!" Carter protested as Newkirk gave him a shove toward the still-intact southbound span.

"You want to stay _here_?"

Another burst of machine-gun fire tore a few good-sized chunks out of a nearby oak tree. "Um… no, not really." It wasn't such a bad idea… at least, not until they encountered yet a _third_unit of armed troopers prepared to cut them off on the far side of the span. "_Now _what?" Carter asked.

Newkirk eyed the churning black water some twenty feet beneath the tracks with distaste. Still, it was the only direction left for them to go. "We jump," he decided.

"But I can't swim!"

More gunfire pinged off the metal trusswork near their heads, and they ducked down lower. "What do you think you can learn to do faster, Andrew… swim, or deflect bullets?"

"I don't…"

"It's not deep!"

"How do _you _know?" Carter challenged, starting to hyperventilate, his voice going all wobbly. "You come here a lot?"

No time to lose; Newkirk put his hand on Carter's back and gave him a hard shove that sent him cannonballing down to the water below. "You can thank me later." He waited a few seconds, until Carter's startled howl was followed by a splash, then held his nose and jumped off the trestle to follow him.

The water wasn't cold. It was _freezing. _But luck, of a sort, was with him: Carter's wild flailing was just a couple of feet away; he hadn't been swept too far downstream by the current. If there were an actual name for that frenetic swimming technique of Andrew's, 'eggbeater' would fit the bill. Newkirk grabbed the back of his black sweater as one would the scruff of an errant puppy and pulled his head above the water. "Quiet!" he snapped. "You want those Krauts on us?"

"If they've got a boat, _yeah_!" Carter spluttered. He had lost his hat, and he figured he had just swallowed about a gallon of the bone-chilling river water, which tasted like a stew of old fish and stale cabbage. If Newkirk was going to give him yes-or-no questions like that one, he wasn't even going to think before giving his answer... he wanted out of that river, _now._

The one place there didn't seem to be any troops was on the riverbank, and Newkirk headed for the closer one, swimming awkwardly with just one arm, the back of Carter's sweater still firmly locked in the fingers of his right hand. The gun was long gone. The detonator and dynamite, too. The colonel wasn't going to like that. They'd have a lot to answer for when they got back to Stalag 13. _If _they got back.

oo O oo

A half-hour later, they were still alive. Newkirk was pleased about that. The long cold trudge through the forest on their way back to camp, with the soles of his feet making an audible _squish _inside his waterlogged shoes with every soggy step, was less to his liking. But it appeared that they had lost the patrols, and they were beginning to recognize some landmarks. It looked as if they were almost home free.

Carter stopped short and angled his head. "What was that?"

"What was what?"

"I heard something."

"There's nothin' out there for miles." It was mostly wishful thinking; by Newkirk's reckoning they'd already had more than their share of unscheduled events that evening, and simply denying the possibility that there could be more in store for them before they reached the safety of the camp seemed like the best idea under the circumstances.

"No, I really heard something! It sounded like..." Then Carter gave a feeble grin and twisted his index finger in his right ear. "Never mind... guess I've still got water in my ears."

"And a good thing too, otherwise your head would be completely empty." Newkirk gave Carter's shoulder a push forward. "Keep walkin'."

Not two minutes later, Newkirk was the one to stop in his tracks. "What are _you _stopping for?" Carter asked.

Newkirk held a finger to his lips. "I thought _I _heard somethin' just then," he whispered.

"Just bang on your ear, like this..."

"I'll bang on _your_ ear in a minute... _listen._"

There _was _something out there, just up ahead. Newkirk motioned silently to Carter to circle around whatever it was to the left, and indicated that he would circle to the right. Carter nodded wordlessly and started, with remarkable agility, to follow through. Sometimes Carter was surprisingly light on his feet. The problem was that you could never really count on when those times would be.

The voice that came at them out of the dark forest stopped both of them cold... first because they _didn't_ recognize it, and then because they _did._ In precise King's English it shouted, "Stop where you are! Lay down your weapons! I warn you, I am heavily armed and an expert shot!"

"Hey..." Carter began. "Isn't that..."

"A fine endin' to a rotten evening," Newkirk grumbled.

Colonel Rodney Crittendon stumbled out of the copse of trees, righted himself, and peered in the dimness towards the two men dressed in black. "I say... you're not Gerries." And a good thing, too... standing tall in the clearing like that, with his usual blinding white silk scarf around his neck, he would have been an easy target for even the most nearsighted of patrols. Also, in spite of his forceful declaration just then, he didn't actually have a gun.

Carter saluted by sheer force of habit; apparently Newkirk had already decided no such display of respect was called for in this case, not even for an officer of his own army. "Colonel Crittendon... Sergeant Carter Andrew J. reporting, sir."

"Carter? Not _Hogan's_ Carter?"

"Yes, sir."

"Smashing!" the British officer declared with a broad smile. "Who's that with you, Carter?"

Newkirk wasn't bothering to answer, so Carter stepped up. "Oh... that's Corporal Newkirk Peter. Hey Newkirk, do you have a middle initial?"

"D," the corporal muttered.

"What's that stand for?"

"Done In."

"On your way back to Stalag 13, Carter?" Crittendon inquired with absolutely no attempt to lower his voice.

"Yes, sir."

"Jolly good. I'll accompany you."

"Uh... you _will, _sir?"

Marvelous, Newkirk mused. It wasn't enough they were going to have to tell Colonel Hogan about the loss of their detonation equipment and the dynamite, plus the complete wash-out of their half of tonight's operation, but they were also going to be bringing back to camp the one person in the entire combined Allied forces that Colonel Hogan would have loved to see defect to the other side for the good of the war effort. He realized he might not _be _a corporal much longer. He wondered if there was any rank lower than private that a bloke could be busted to for occasions such as this one.

"Of course," Crittendon said with his usual self-assurance. "I was on my way there anyway. I escaped from Stalag 6 again a couple of nights ago... brought four of my most dependable, skilled fighting men out with me. Fine lads."

"And..." Newkirk finally decided to join the conversation, "might one ask, where _are _they, sir?" He figured the answer would be good for a laugh, if nothing else.

"Oh... yes..." Crittendon tugged at his collar and looked around at nothing in particular. "Well, I'm actually not sure, now that you mention it. We were all right for a while but then the men started getting rather squirrelly... "

"I can see how that could happen, sir." And yes, that was a not-so-thinly-veiled commentary on the colonel's leadership skills, which Hogan's men had experienced first-hand a few times before. A man who had once stolen a truck full of explosives and driven it not only _away _from the target but _into _Stalag 13 and parked it next to the barracks as it ticked ever closer to the pre-set detonation time was not a man who tended to inspire a great deal of confidence in his underlings.

"Silly fools, I told them I knew where we were going. But they insisted on doing some reconnoitering on their own. The four of them took off, one in each direction, and told me they'd be back in twenty minutes. Brave fellows. That was the day before yesterday and I've not seen hide or hair of them since."

"Maybe they got captured," Carter suggested.

"All _four _of 'em, goin' in different directions? What are the odds?" Newkirk countered. "They scarpered, every man for 'imself. That was probably their plan from the moment they left Stalag 6."

"At any rate..." Crittendon gave Carter a chummy slap on the back, then examined his hand curiously when it came away damp. "Onward, eh? Back to the barn, as it were. Follow me, lads. I shall guide you." He took a half-dozen solid marching steps that caused a loud snapping of twigs beneath his feet.

"Excuse me, sir," Newkirk interjected, pointing, "but the camp is _this _way."

"Nonsense. It's due north of our position."

"And you're headed east, sir."

"Am I?" Crittendon squinted up at the stars... only heaven knew if he actually knew what he was looking at... then nodded. "By Jove, you're right. Must've gotten turned around back there when that farmer chased me."

"What farmer?"

"Rather disagreeable old codger, I must say. Nearly clipped me with a shotgun blast. Fortunately, I have the reflexes of a cat."

"I'd call that good news for the mice."

"Civilians aren't allowed to have firearms," Carter spoke up, confused.

"I daresay _he_doesn't know that. Old dodderer doesn't even understand German; I called out to him in a strong clear voice plain as day, _Ich __bin __deutsche!_" He demonstrated, and Carter winced at his mangled pronunciation.

It was his _volume_ that made Newkirk wince, but before he had a chance to mention it an angry German voice with perfect pronunciation called out in return from much too close by, and a loud burst of gunfire rang out. Newkirk and Carter both scrambled to get away.

"_Ich __bin __deutsche, _old top!" Crittendon tried again at the top of his lungs. "My good man, if even you Gerries can't be bothered to speak this ridiculous language, I can't see why the rest of us should take the trouble to learn it!"

Carter and Newkirk doubled back, each grabbed one of the colonel's arms, and propelled him forward along with them towards Stalag 13.


	3. Chapter 3

"Kraut coming." Then LeBeau took a second, more careful look out the barracks door that he held ajar, and shook his head dismissively. "It's only Schultz."

It depended on the situation whether or not they would go to any trouble to try and hide anything from the easily-manipulated barracks guard. Hogan nodded to Bluebird, at the sink scrubbing the black streaks of burned cork off her face, that she should go ahead and finish getting cleaned up. It wasn't like it would be the first time Schultz had discovered their Underground colleague in the barracks. Or the second. In fatigues and a tweed watch cap she wasn't exactly a fashion plate, but Schultz wasn't _that _stupid.

Schultz entered with his customary officiousness... that was how his visits often _started_, anyway, but very seldom how they finished. "Colonel Hogan, the _Kommandant _has called a special roll call this evening... he wants everyone outside in five minutes."

"What for, Schultz?" Hogan countered. He didn't really care; his mind was on more pressing matters, but there was always the possibility of being able to extract some useful information from the gullible sergeant and Hogan wasn't one to let such an opportunity go by if he could help it.

"Because he _said _so," Schultz countered neatly, with a smug smile. It was going to be one of _those _nights, then.

"Your copy of _Sergeant __of __the __Guard __Monthly _must have arrived this morning," Kinch noted. "You always get more gung-ho for a few days after you take the quiz in the back."

Might as well cut to the chase. "What's going on outside the wire, Schultz?" Hogan asked pointblank, hoping to catch him off-guard with the direct approach.

"_Ha..._" he smiled smugly. "Even if I _know _why they are digging such a big hole out there, you think I would tell _you_?"

"_Digging_?" Hogan, Kinch and LeBeau all repeated the word in unison.

"_Ja..._" Too late, as usual, Schultz was starting to realize that once again some information had come out of his mouth without his being aware of it. He would now begin the laborious process of trying to remember the last two or three things he had said in order to evaluate how much trouble he would be in if the _Kommandant _found out.

"Colonel, that's really close to..."

"All right," Hogan cut Kinch off abruptly. He knew Kinch wasn't careless enough to let anything important slip... there was _one _sergeant in this conversation who had his head screwed on straight, after all... but the words he hadn't had to say were "emergency tunnel", and Hogan realized that all too well. "Thanks, Schultz... see you in the morning."

"Wait a minute... what about the roll call?"

"Everybody's here. Where else would they be?"

"I don't _know _where else they would be. I don't _care _to know where else they would be. All I care about is getting fifteen men lined up outside in five minutes as the _Kommandant _ordered!"

That was going to be difficult, with only thirteen present and accounted for. Even on his best day, and this sure wasn't it, Hogan knew he was unequal to the task of pulling a 'loaves and fishes' miracle to make more men appear out of however many he had on hand. At the moment they didn't even have any escaping airmen in the tunnel who might be pressed into understudying for Newkirk and Carter. There was no telling when... or _if... _they would get back. And he wasn't sure how long he could stall. Five minutes wasn't much time.

"Can't you count us inside? It's cold out there."

Hogan could see Olsen in the far corner meet his gaze and nod... good; Olsen would try to work his way around the room so as to be counted three times, while the others did their best to confuse Schultz while he was counting. It had worked before.

But it wasn't going to work this evening. "Everybody outside in _fünf M__inuten! __Raus!__"_ Schultz grabbed LeBeau's beret off the table and thrust it at the Frenchman's chest.

"Hey!" LeBeau protested.

"Outside, Cockroach! Everybody outside! Everybody out..." Schultz's temporary achievements in the efficiency department disintegrated without a trace when he yanked the towel away from the face of the person drying off at the sink. "_Ach __du __Lieber..._"

"Hi Schultz," Bluebird greeted him casually. "Be right with you. Outside, you said?"

"Not _you!_"

She gave an indifferent shrug. "You said _everybody_."

"Jolly joker..." Schultz turned with pleading wide blue eyes to Hogan. "Colonel Hogan... _please_..._"_

Hogan shook his head. _"_Sorry, Schultz; if we'd known you were coming we would have had a chance to tidy up a little. If you just drop in like this, you have to take us as we are... with a few little things lying around."

"Colonel Hogan, I have ordered you to... I have requested that you please... now I am _begging _you... that girl... you _must_ get _rid_ of her!"

"We tried that, Schultz. The mail-order company doesn't take returns past thirty days without a receipt."

Now Schultz was so wound up there were no words coming out of his rapidly-moving lips. It would have been good sport continuing to toy with him on any regular evening, but at that moment they all heard the distinct tapping from beneath the barracks floor for the second time that night. That had to be the missing Carter and Newkirk. Finally, _something _was going right.

"Okay, Schultzie," LeBeau nodded, turning the massive German around with an effort so he faced the door. The two of them side by side gave the effect of a single overworked tugboat about to blow a gasket in its attempt to maneuver the _Queen __Mary _into port. "Five minutes. We understand. We'll be there." Kinch got the door open and between the two of them they managed to eject Schultz before he could find anything else to panic about.

Hogan sprinted to the bunk and tripped the switch, and was relieved to see Carter start up the ladder with Newkirk close on his heels. "What happened? What kept you?"

"It's a long story, sir," Newkirk replied.

Of that there was no doubt; both of them were soaking wet, for starters. "Give me the abridged version; we've got a roll call in four and a half minutes."

"We didn't hear your half of the bridge blow," Kinch spoke up.

"That's... probably mostly because it didn't," Carter admitted.

"Three patrols were on us at once," Newkirk continued, before Hogan's frown could deepen. "We had no choice, we had to leave everythin' where it was and run for our lives. As it is we had to take a header off the bridge and into the river, and that water's bloody freezin'. It was all we could do to..."

"You left the bridge wired?" Hogan interrupted. "You left the dynamite?"

So much for playing the sympathy card. "Well, sir... as I said, it's a long story."

"Are there any _good _parts in this story?"

Newkirk lost eye contact. "Not really, sir, no."

The whistle blew shrilly outside... they were out of time for the moment, not exactly unwelcome news for Newkirk and Carter who were in no real hurry to go into the details of everything else that had transpired that evening. Kinch hurriedly tossed Newkirk his long RAF overcoat to cover his still-wet 'work clothes' since there would be no time for him to change, and Bluebird handed Carter his leather flight jacket and shearling cap. It would have to do; hopefully his soaking wet trousers wouldn't be too obvious in the dark.

"Is there anything else I need to know right now?" Hogan pressed.

Carter cleared his throat nervously. "Well... now that you mention it, sir..."

Crittendon had just made it to the top of the ladder, and gave a cheery wave of his swagger stick. "Hogan, old boy! We meet again, what? Jolly good to see you!"

Hogan stared wordlessly at the unexpected visitor for a second or two, then turned to Kinch. "Get Schultz back in here, will you?"

"What for, Colonel?"

"I need him to shoot me."


	4. Chapter 4

On most cold nights Hogan disliked having to stand in formation and listen to Klink. Tonight, with the knowledge that Crittendon was waiting for him inside the barracks as soon as this roll call was dismissed, he fervently hoped that the _Kommandant _planned to be even more long-winded than usual... maybe take a page out of the _Führer_'s book and go on for three or four hours, even.

"I regret to inform you," the self-proclaimed Iron Eagle of Stalag 13 droned, "that until further notice, all prisoners are confined to the barracks."

"Sounds all right to me," Newkirk called out as he pulled his overcoat collar more snugly around his neck. "Let's start right now, shall we?"

"Insolence!" Klink snapped back. "How would you like three days in the cooler?"

"It's gotta be warmer in there than out 'ere, mate."

Hogan took a step forward. "Colonel Klink, I protest. On what grounds are you confining us?"

"Colonel Hogan, your protest has been noted. And I do not need grounds to confine you. I can do whatever I like. It's one of the benefits of being the _Kommandant._"

"According to the Geneva Convention..."

"The Geneva Convention states that the safety of the prisoners is my responsibility, and I am declaring your confinement to barracks a safety issue. For the next several days there will be some activity in the vicinity of the camp that may present a certain element of risk, therefore you are ordered to remain in the barracks until I give orders to the contrary."

"Sir, the Geneva Convention also states that prisoners of war are not to be exposed to any undue threats to health and safety. I respectfully request more details about the big digging project outside the wire."

"And I respectfully choose to ignore your..." Suddenly it became unpleasantly clear to Klink that Hogan already knew more than he was supposed to about the activity outside the wire. How _much _more was anybody's guess. "Who told you there was any digging going on?" He didn't really need to ask; his monocled gaze went immediately to Schultz, who was standing in his usual spot looking extremely guilty. "Schultz! Do I need to ask you again whose side you're on?"

"Oh, I am on _our _side, _Herr __Kommandant,_" the stocky sergeant assured him.

"Then let me remind you who is on _their _side. Colonel Hogan is not to be given any privileged information, is that clear? This project will continue and the prisoners will not leave the barracks for recreation or for any other reason until further notice. Is that understood?"

Schultz clicked his boot-heels together and tried to stand up even taller. "Understood, _Herr __Kommandant_!" In a second or two the standing-taller bit required too much effort and he slumped back down to his usual stance, which passed for 'attention', 'at ease', or any just about any other position he was ever required to assume.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I can't accept that," Hogan said.

Klink stalked the half-dozen paces that put him nearly nose-to-nose with the ranking POW officer. "Colonel Hogan, you will accept what I _tell_ you to accept. Any of your men caught outside the barracks will be shot on sight. This is not only up to me, this is a Gestapo matter."

"Oh, so the Gestapo's doing the digging?"

Klink slammed his riding crop against his own leg in frustration. "No! I mean, yes. I mean..." He had brought his hand up to the bill of his cap and was about to issue the dismissal order, exactly what he always did whenever he realized Hogan was getting the better of him again, but then narrowed his eyes and took a couple of steps more, to the second line of prisoners, and stopped in front of Carter.

Carter swallowed hard, making his already-prominent Adam's apple bob up and down noticeably. This never happened. And he wished it wasn't happening now. "Uh... evening, Colonel." He tried to smile, but only succeeded in making himself look slightly sick to his stomach.

"Sergeant Carter, what is that on your face?"

"M... my face?"

Klink removed his leather glove and dragged his fingertips briskly down Carter's left cheek. They came away heavily smudged with black, and he held them up so Carter could clearly see them. "Yes. This. What is _this_?"

Most of it had come off during their struggle in the river, but there was still some soot clinging to his skin. On Newkirk it didn't show so much; his face was pretty much covered up with the wide lapels of his dark blue overcoat that he'd turned up against the chilly night air, but Carter's jacket didn't offer him as much protection. "Um..."

"Carter was cleaning the stove tonight," Hogan spoke up. "I keep telling the men they need to spruce up for roll calls, but you caught us by surprise with this one... he didn't have time for a facial."

The men in the ranks laughed as they knew they were expected to; Hogan's wit on these occasions wasn't for entertainment value, it was intended as a distraction and they always did their best to make it carry as far as it possibly could. LeBeau was one of the best at such reactions; he had a loud infectious laugh and he could keep it going longer than just about anyone, and then he'd often repeat the witticism for even more mileage.

More annoyed than appeased, Klink returned to his customary place in front of the ranks and raised a stiff hand to his cap. "_Dis_-missed!"

"That was a close call, sir," Newkirk observed as the men clustered together on their way back into the barracks.

"Right," Hogan nodded. He stared at the barracks door and gave a heavy sigh before opening it. "Now, out of the frying pan and into the fire."

It hadn't taken Crittendon long to make himself at home; he was supervising Bluebird in the approved method of brewing and pouring a proper British cup of tea, and although she was cooperating she was still looking at him with the curiosity usually reserved for examining sideshow freaks that might or might not turn out to be dangerous. In other words, Hogan thought to himself, although she had just met him for the first time, she already had his number. Bluebird was a quick study. "All right, Crittendon," Hogan began as the door fell shut behind him and his men, "so tell me... you broke out of Stalag 6. Again."

"That's it in a nutshell, old boy. This makes my..." He counted out five fingers, then thought silently for a moment and folded one down again. "My fourth attempt, I believe. And it will be my _last_, I can assure you."

"Let's hope so." Hogan meant something else entirely by that statement, but it was a cinch Crittendon didn't know what was in his mind. Unable to tolerate any more from that source for the moment, he turned again to Carter and Newkirk. "Okay, let's have the rest of it. You lost the dynamite, the bridge is still hot, you went for a swim, you found Crittendon... _and_?"

"There really isn't that much else to tell, sir," Newkirk said.

"We didn't get to the part about the farmer yet," Carter recalled.

"What farmer?" Hogan demanded. "Did he see anything? Can he identify you?"

"I don't think so. It was dark, and he wasn't that close when he shot at us."

"You were _shot _at? Oh, great. That really makes the night perfect, doesn't it? It's a good thing he didn't hit you."

"Well, actually..." Carter stopped short when Newkirk planted an elbow in his ribs. "Ow!"

"Extraordinary thing," Crittendon picked up. There was no elbow in the world that could silence _him_ when he got talking. "There was the most annoying old farmer out there blasting away at us with a shotgun full of rock salt. Never heard of such a thing." He gave Newkirk a knowing glance. "That must sting a bit, eh, corporal?"

"He _did _hit you?" Hogan demanded, fast approaching the end of his tether. "Where? How bad?"

"I'd say it's more insult than injury, sir," Newkirk insisted, clearing his throat. "Just grazed me a bit. No real harm done."

"Newkirk!"

Newkirk chewed his lip for a long moment as Hogan, Kinch, LeBeau and Bluebird all stared at him waiting for an answer. "Well, I were runnin' _away_, weren't I?" he finally blurted out. When LeBeau made a move to look behind him, Newkirk stepped to put his back to the wall. "Look, do you _mind_?"

"Are you all right?" Kinch pressed.

"Of course I'm all right; you see me standin' here, don't you?"

"And I think he might be standing for a while," Carter couldn't resist adding.

"Will you shut up_?__"_

"You're really okay, _mon __pote_?" LeBeau asked again. "Are you sure?"

"How many times do I have to tell you?" Newkirk demanded, now thoroughly embarrassed by the unwanted attention. He was more than ready for a change of subject.

That was all LeBeau needed to hear; thus reassured, he felt all right about starting to laugh, and Kinch and Bluebird joined him. "All right, all right, pipe down," Hogan ordered, as Crittendon moved off from the rest of the group and began calmly pacing the floor with his cup of tea, looking like he didn't have a care in the world. "We got unlucky tonight, that's all."

"Seems like some of us were unluckier than others," Kinch observed with a sly grin in the English corporal's direction.

"The worst part of it is, the bloke wasn't even aimin_' _at _me_!" Newkirk hissed, throwing a vicious glare toward Crittendon's nearby back. "_I_ wasn't the one makin' all the bloody noise out there!"

"It's not your fault, Newkirk," Hogan said in low tones. "Crittendon can foul up _gravity_; there's no way to get out of a situation like that one without taking a hit."

"Literally," Bluebird agreed, trying without much success to regain a straight face.

"I hear your phone in Rennes ringin'," Newkirk snapped back. "Why don't you go see what DeGaulle wants?"

She poured out another cup of tea and handed it to him; he was tempted to refuse it on principal, but as cold and wet as he was he couldn't quite bring himself not to snatch it out of her hand... even if she _was _still giggling. What he wouldn't have given for a malt-whiskey stiffener to dump into the chipped ceramic mug.

Hogan was about to try again for the attention of everyone in the vicinity... at least the _capable _ones; he didn't care if Crittendon walked right straight out the barracks door and out the front gate, and he desperately hoped nobody would try and stop him if he _did _try that... when yet again came the tentative tapping sound from the tunnel below. That was the quickest way to kill the wave of amusement at Newkirk's expense that most of them had been riding. Because this time, it made no sense.

"Who's in the tunnel?" Hogan demanded.

"Nobody," Kinch said with certainty. "The prisoners were all present for roll call, Bluebird and Crittendon are both right here, and nobody's opened the trap door since we came back in."

"It's somebody who knows our procedure," Carter said with optimism.

"Or it's somebody who wrung our procedure _out _of somebody who knows our procedure," Hogan pointed out.

Everyone was deadly serious now. LeBeau and Bluebird removed the emergency pistols from their hiding place in the hollowed-out bench, and both of them leveled the weapons at the trap door as Kinch waited for Hogan's nod to open up. When the okay came and the door slid upwards on its wires, even Crittendon was giving the situation his undivided attention. "Whoever's below, come on up," Hogan called in a voice that indicated he would tolerate no suspicious behavior. If unannounced visitors kept showing up, they'd have to look into renting the ballroom at the _Hausnerhof_. "Make it _slow_, and keep your hands where I can see 'em or it'll be the last mistake you make."

When one doesn't know what to expect, one often imagines the worst. This was _far_ from the worst that could happen. Manicured nails topped the delicate fingers that grasped the rungs of the ladder, then a cloud of soft platinum-blonde hair appeared. By the time the woman's face was visible, Hogan knew he could relax. "_Tiger._"

"I am sorry, Colonel Hogan," the French operative said in her appealingly-accented English. "I didn't have time to contact you by radio before I came."

"That's all right,"

"That's _more _than all right," Newkirk murmured under his breath. "Drop by any time, luv." Tiger's only non-professional interest was in Colonel Hogan, that had always been quite clear to everyone… but a man could still _look, _as long as he was subtle about it_._

And Newkirk wasn't the only one. A few of the boys, ones not in Hogan's direct line of sight, let out a couple of soft whistles as the beautiful agent finished scaling the ladder and climbed over the rail, courteously assisted by LeBeau. The legs were the last part of her to appear, and they were as much of a masterpiece as the rest of her. Even Crittendon allowed his attention to stray from his cup of tea… and was it Hogan's imagination, or was the British officer doing his best to thrust out his chest while simultaneously holding in his rather ample stomach? Oh, brother…

For her part, Tiger was focused only on Hogan. "I had to see you, _Colonel_," she said as soon as they were face to face.

"Then maybe this isn't such a lousy night after all," he told her with a hint of a smile. "We've got the 'your place or mine?' part figured out; what comes next?"

Her large brown eyes met his with calm reserve. "You may not feel that way when I give you my report."

"No, I'm pretty sure I'll still feel that way... but okay, go ahead. What _else _is wrong in Germany tonight that someone wants us to do something about?"

"The Germans have devised a plan to stockpile weapons and explosives around the countryside so they will be near at hand in the event of close combat... which is to say 'retreat', although they have not yet used that word in the formal dispatches."

"I like that word... well, when _they're _saying it, anyway."

"In the case of a retreat, Hitler's intention is to leave nothing behind that the Allies would be able to use."

"Your basic scorched-earth policy," Kinch nodded knowingly. "Tried and true military tactic."

"They've tried that before. What makes this time any different?" Hogan asked.

"Because this time they are positioning their stockpiles in strategically significant places. They have, unfortunately, learned from past mistakes. I have information on the nearest one that we were able to obtain from a contact inside their operations center."

"And London wants us to knock it out? I hate to tell 'em this, but we've got some unfinished business about two miles from camp that looks like a half a railroad bridge that we need to take care of first."

"_This_ target is your first priority, Colonel Hogan."

"And why's that?"

"Because the new Hammelburg Zone ammunition dump will be located directly outside Stalag 13."

"Now we know why they're digging," LeBeau remarked grimly.

Carter nodded. "I was hoping I'd feel _better _when that happened… but I don't."

"The Krauts could use that stockpile against either the advancing Allied forces during the invasion, or _us, _or _both._"Hogan thought for what seemed to the men to be a long moment… usually the colonel thought fast; when he hesitated it always seemed like it was taking too long. "Tiger, do you have any additional information? Specs, anything like that?"

Tiger nodded and removed an oilskin pouch from an inside pocket of her leather coat, then carefully unfolded the blueprints contained within it. "We were able to obtain these from our contact."

"You took a big risk carrying these in."

"London felt you needed to see them for yourself."

"I owe you a candlelight dinner for two after the war's over. I'll let you pick the place, only no German restaurants. _Wienerschnitzel _gives me indigestion. In fact, so does Germany."

Carter and Bluebird hurriedly cleared the table of the array of coffee cups and ashtrays so Hogan could spread the plans out for everyone to examine. One thing was immediately and unpleasantly clear, the moment they got a good look at the specifications for the Stalag 13 repository in relation to the fence and the guard towers.

"That's not just _close _to our emergency tunnel, Colonel, that's right on _top _of it," Kinch said.

"Right..." Hogan nodded. "So first off we need to do two things: try and figure out a way to get them to stop digging, and start filling in the emergency tunnel just in case we _can't_."

"You mean... we're gonna be trapped in here?" Carter asked. "_Real _prisoners?"

"Looks like it, at least for the time being. If they break through down there and follow the tunnel back to this barracks, we're not just _real_ prisoners, we're real _dead _prisoners. Then they'll start digging some _more_ holes, but these'll be smaller ones... about three by six feet each."

"What's our next move, Colonel?" Kinch inquired after a thought-provoking pause.

"First we get Tiger out of here while it's still possible." She was about to protest, he could tell, but he didn't feel he had the time to let her. "You're needed on the outside, Tiger; we can't risk you getting caught in here with no way out. Worst-case scenario, even if they _do _get all of us, you'll still be able to carry on sabotage operations in the area."

She shook her head. "But you will need all the help you can get to close off the tunnel."

"I've got all the help I need. We built that tunnel; we're the best ones to take it down. My boys know that system inside out. It's safer for everybody this way."

Long accustomed to following orders, Tiger was still unused to finding it this difficult to do so on certain occasions. "I will not forget that dinner you owe me," she told the colonel with a soft smile. "Be careful."

"Always," he assured her.

Of all the lousy things that had already happened that evening, watching Tiger climb back down that ladder knowing she might never be able to get back in again was the lousiest from Hogan's standpoint. "Okay..." he began as soon as he was sure she was well on her way to the exit, "it's gonna be a long night. Everybody down in the tunnel."


	5. Chapter 5

Six a.m. roll call always came too early. But after the men had been up all night, it felt like this one came earlier than one ever had before, in all the time they'd been at Stalag 13.

"Colonel!" Olsen called from above, where he was taking his turn watching the barracks door. "They're changing the tower guards! That means roll call in ten minutes!"

"Feels like we just had one," Hogan grumbled. The night's project had gone slowly, and although definite progress had been made, the branch of the emergency tunnel that led to the escape hatch in the tree stump outside the wire was nowhere near filled in yet. Oh sure, these nice roomy tunnels were great for working, for storing contraband, for two-way traffic plus a left-turn lane, even... but it had been so long since they'd been dug it was hard to remember how long it had taken them, and the filling-in part was just as back-breaking. On top of all that, they were a mess; there would be no hiding the fact that they were all covered head to toe in dirt and muck from even as cursory an inspection as Schultz had ever given them on one of his 'I see nothing' once-overs, with one eye closed and his pudgy hand over the other one. "All right, everybody knock off... get cleaned up as best you can, as _fast _as you can, and be ready when the whistle blows."

Carter already looked half-asleep, lolling from side to side with his cheek resting on his folded hands on the end of his pickaxe and fighting gravity with his eyelids. Gravity was winning. "Right, Colonel..."

"We're running out of fill," Kinch advised Hogan. "We can't take more out from G quadrant; it'll get unstable."

Hogan had anticipated this. "We'll start taking it from the area between the branches to Klink's quarters and the cooler."

The exhausted chorus of groans confirmed something else he had anticipated. "But _Colonel, _that's another fifty, sixty feet that we'll have to haul the dirt!" LeBeau protested.

"If we take it from anyplace closer, we risk compromising the integrity of the whole main shaft." Hogan tossed his shovel to the ground. LeBeau was right... there was no denying that... but they really had no choice.

As for Crittendon, he looked ridiculously, almost offensively, chipper. He'd been awake as long as the rest of them had, but for some reason he seemed nearly impervious to the bone-tiredness the rest of them were feeling. Maybe it was the never knowing any better that did it. Sometimes too much knowledge wasn't such a good thing. "Hogan's right, LeBeau," he advised in that clipped accent that to Hogan always sounded like fingernails dragging on a chalkboard. "Bad show all 'round, if we weaken that section. We'll soldier on, eh?" His solid clap on LeBeau's shoulder almost sent the exhausted Frenchman into the nearest wall; he barely regained his balance and gave Crittendon a narrow-eyed glare that more than conveyed his unspoken feelings. "You go ahead, Hogan... mustn't be late for roll call, that would attract suspicion. I'll remain here and continue working."

Hogan shook his head. "It's not safe to be down here alone; we've already removed a lot of support."

"I won't be alone, old boy; I'll have Private Byrd with me."

Hogan's overtired mind almost accepted that statement without question, then the 'but _Crittendon_ said it' alarm bell went off in his head, and like it or not he had to backtrack. "We don't _have _a Private Byrd," he said with annoyance.

"Nonsense! Don't tell me you've overtaxed yourself to _that_ point. Private Hugh Byrd is right _here_, Hogan. If I were you, I'd have a bit of a lie-down topside... you don't look at all well. Don't even recognize your own men. I say, you're not on the verge of cracking up, are you?"

Hogan looked. And there, at Crittendon's left elbow, was Bluebird. _Hugh __Byrd._ Maybe Crittendon didn't _look_ fatigued, but he was screwed down as tightly as ever... which was to say, not at all. They had been digging shoulder to shoulder all night long, yet somehow Crittendon in his usual idiotic fashion had completely failed to either correctly note the name of the Underground agent who was digging with them _or_ the fact that she was a female. It wasn't necessarily obvious; she was no Tiger. She wore fatigues like the rest of them did, her dark hair was cut in a close crop, and most of her youthful angles were straight lines, but still... there _was_ a _girl _under all that dirt, and Colonel Rodney Crittendon had to be the only red-blooded man in _any _army who would fail to realize that fact close up. "Private Byrd..." Hogan heard himself mumbling in disbelief. "Of course…"

Bluebird's eyes widened as the reality dawned on her. "_Me_...?"

Crittendon took the empty fill-bucket from Hogan's hands and placed it firmly in hers. "There you are, my boy... you've put in a good night's work, but there's much more yet to do, what? No roll call for you, eh? Escaped from another stalag, did you? Well, that's capital; means you can burrow away down here nonstop without the Gerries nosing about. Excellent bit of luck."

"Colonel..." she began to Hogan, starting to look really worried now. Bluebird was a trooper, never one to go to pieces on him, but it looked like her time had about come. Could Underground agents go AWOL? He might be about to find out. "I have to stay down here with _him_?"

Hogan shrugged. "Sorry, Private... the rest of us are wanted in the mezzanine." No use trying to explain it to Crittendon; he never understood anyway, and it wasn't all that important in the larger scheme of things. Having a team, even a small one, to continue the filling-in might end up making the difference between success and failure. Even if Crittendon himself were a full fifty percent of that team.

Newkirk swiped a sweaty hand across his equally sweaty cheek, streaking the dirt that clung to his unshaven face, and thrust his spade into her free hand. "Buck up, Hugh," he told her. "We'll spell you in a few hours."

"Why don't _you_ go _sit __down_…?" she muttered to him under her breath.

He smiled smoothly. "It'd only remind me of you."

Kinch perched his milk-can miner's helmet on top of her head. "Pace yourself, Hugh."

LeBeau hooked his arm on Carter's elbow… Carter was, rather miraculously, asleep on his feet yet perfectly balanced… and started to lead him toward the ladder. "Let's go, Carter. Roll call." Then he pulled off his heavy leather gloves and heaped them into Bluebird's arms on the way by, along with Carter's pickaxe. "_Bonne __chance, _Hugh."

"Who's Hugh…?" Carter mumbled.

"Good man," Crittendon nodded in approval towards Bluebird. "Wiry. Could probably scurry out a drain if you took the trap out first. Wish I had a dozen more like him."

"Well… there really _is _nobody else quite like Private Byrd, sir," Hogan told him.

Bluebird unceremoniously dumped everything they had loaded down with into a heap on the dirt floor. "I want a fairer war!" she told Hogan.

"Maybe the next one," he nodded as he got into line for his turn up the ladder.

oo 0 oo

A night without sleep sure made time fly. It seemed like they had just been lined up outside the barracks an hour or so ago, and here they were again. Hogan was all too aware that his men were hardly at their best. He was just hoping they could keep on their feet until the roll call was over. Carter was listing pretty significantly to the right without a pick to lean on; Kinch was giving him a hard nudge every so often to bring him back up to vertical.

"If I fall over," LeBeau murmured to Newkirk, "catch me."

"You'd better hurry, then, because _I_ plan to fall over before you've made up your mind to."

He stifled a yawn. "Okay; I'll see you down there."

"Right."

Schultz shuffled in between the two rows of men, pointing to each one in turn with a snap of his thick wrist as he counted them off. "No talking in the ranks!" he ordered brusquely.

"Since when?" LeBeau challenged.

"Since the Big Shot had me in his office for an hour after last night's roll call complaining about how the prisoners don't show respect in the formation, _that__'__s _since when! If you don't stop talking I put you on report, Cockroach!" He paused, looked at his finger as if hoping to see a number written on it to remind him of his place, then glanced at Newkirk. "Are you _zwölf __oder __dreizehn_?"

"You'd better watch your language, Schultzie, or _you__'__ll_ be the one on report," Newkirk warned.

"What did I say?" Schultz asked, genuinely bewildered.

"You know what you said," LeBeau insisted. "We _all_ heard you."

"Me mum'd wash me mouth out with soap if I ever used words like that," Newkirk added. "Shockin'."

"Words like 'twelve'?" Schultz frowned, completely off the rails now.

In spite of himself, Hogan couldn't resist a grin. Schultz had no doubt had a full night of sleep, yet he _still _couldn't think as quickly as the overtired prisoners could. It was little things like this that kept everyone sane from day to day. Hopelessly lost in his count now, Schultz was forced to lumber all the way back down the line to start over, even as the men down at that end repeated _zwölf _over and over again trying to hang him up a second time.

Kommandant Klink marched down the steps of his office and across the compound with his customary air of arrogance. "Report!"

"I am still counting, _Herr __Kommandant_," was the limit to what Schultz had to report so far.

"Schultz, there are only fifteen prisoners in this barracks. How long does it take you to count to fifteen?"

"You mean, today?"

"I would like you to _finish _today, if at all possible. Now complete the count and report!"

Shushing the constant low murmurs of _zwölf, __zwölf _that still filled his ears, Schultz stepped up the pace, rapidly finished the count by twos, then added one for Hogan. "All present and accounted for, _Herr __Kommandant_." At least, he was fairly sure they were. He certainly wasn't worried about it enough to go back and try yet again. Close enough.

"Maybe you'd better start counting them _now _for the _noon_ roll call," Klink huffed with contempt. "That only gives you a scant six hours."

Schultz was spared having to think up an answer to that when the front gate swung open and a staff car with Gestapo insignia motored into the camp. As the prisoners and the _Luftwaffe_ soldiers watched, it headed directly for the Kommandant's office, and it had hardly even come to a full stop before Major Hochstetter exited the rear seat looking as if he had urgent business with someone who was going to be very unhappy to see him coming… which Klink always was.

So was Hogan. "Uh oh…" he heard Kinch murmur close behind him. "Trouble in paradise, Colonel."

"The worst kind," Hogan agreed. "Come to check on his construction project, or does he have an even more inconvenient reason to be here?"

Sometimes Hogan talked too much. He knew that about himself. Like now… he had barely uttered the words to speculate on Major Hochstetter's reason for the impromptu visit when a second Gestapo man, this one a corporal, alighted from the driver's seat of the staff car with a very familiar-looking object in his hands.

Carter suddenly popped fully awake, and the words that came to his mind made it out of his mouth before he could think to censor himself. "Hey, that's our detonator!"

"_Quiet_, Carter!" Hogan ordered. "Or should I just ask Hochstetter to come over here so he won't have any trouble hearing you?"

It was, unquestionably, the detonator Carter and Newkirk had left behind at the Reismacher Bridge… there just couldn't be that many of those things lying around unattended. So there was little doubt that the box the corporal left on the seat of the car must contain the dynamite that had been placed and wired but not exploded the night before. "I sure hope they pulled the caps," Kinch said.

"They must have. The road between here and the bridge is an insult to washboards everywhere. If the stuff was still live they'd have arrived by air."

The only good thing about Hochstetter's arrival was that now Klink wouldn't keep them out there much longer. Never the most patient of men, the Gestapo major was willing to wait only five or six seconds before planting himself firmly on the top step_,_feet wide apart and gloved hands clenched into fists,and bellowing, "_Klink_!"

Hogan couldn't resist a snappy salute in the Kommandant's direction. "Dis-missed!" he said crisply.

"I'll deal with you later…" Klink muttered as he turned unwillingly in the direction of his office.

Kinch, Newkirk and LeBeau bunched around Hogan as the formation broke up… Carter, half-asleep again already, didn't seem to realize that everyone else had dispersed and that he was standing, such as it was, alone. "What do you think, Colonel?" Kinch asked.

"I think I'd better try and invite myself to that little party," Hogan replied. "Maybe I can find out some more about what's going on outside the wire. In any case, I want to know whatever Hochstetter knows about what happened at the bridge last night… like if that patrol got a good enough look at Newkirk and Carter to identify them."

"Let's hope not," said LeBeau.

"Nobody can hope not more than _I _can," Newkirk added.

"You guys get back to the barracks before the tower guards get antsy… I'll let you know how it goes."


	6. Chapter 6

"_Well_, Klink?" Hochstetter demanded.

Colonel Klink eyed the muddy detonator that the major's aide had just deposited in the middle of his formerly-tidy desk with distaste. "Well what?" he said with a tinge of annoyance. Only a tinge… he wouldn't have dared make any kind of a firm protest to anything Hochstetter might do to annoy him. The man had a hair-trigger temper and both the will and the capacity to make other peoples' lives very, very difficult… at least, those that he allowed to live at all.

The major snapped his gloves in the direction of the item in question. "This was found last night, less than two miles from Stalag 13."

"Major Hochstetter, this is a prison camp, not the bureau of lost and found. Why are you bringing this to me?"

"The markings on the components indicate that this detonator is American-made. It stands to reason that it was being used by Allied forces to sabotage the Reismacher Bridge. They succeeded in destroying the northbound span, and for that they will pay. Where in this part of Germany would one find Americans, Klink? Surely you must be able to answer _that _question, _ja_?"

Nobody but Hochstetter could make a simple question sound more like an accusation, almost as if he suspected that Klink himself had been out there under cover of darkness trying to blow up the Reich's own railroad tracks. "We have Americans here at Stalag 13, Major, of course. But we just completed a roll call and all are present and accounted for, as they always are. If I were you I would look for these so-called American saboteurs elsewhere. At Stalag 6, for example… I've just received word that five prisoners escaped from there two nights ago."

"Yes, and four have been recaptured. I have interrogated them all… quite _thoroughly, _I assure you."

Klink swallowed hard. "Yes… I'm sure you have…" That didn't even bear thinking about… not if he wanted to have an appetite for breakfast, at any rate.

"They deny any involvement in sabotage, but a patrol in the area pursued two men fleeing in the woods near the Reismacher Bridge that night before losing them in the dark."

"Well, you won't find them _here._ All of _my_ prisoners are here, but Stalag 6 is still down one man. Why not go look for _him?_"

"_Two _men."

"You just said that only _one_ prisoner had not been recaptured."

"One prisoner _is_ still at large… and the _Kommandant_ is being transferred to a somewhat cooler climate." His lip raised slightly… not a smile, he was pretty much incapable of those; just a reflex of self-satisfaction. "That makes _two _men, doesn't it?"

There went Franzie Keppel to the Russian Front… and Klink realized yet again, with that same old sinking feeling he always got at such times, that his Christmas card list was getting shorter and shorter whenever one of his colleagues or old friends did something that displeased the upper echelon. The list was long already… and getting longer every month, it seemed. That remaining prisoner who had escaped from Stalag 6 had at least a small chance of making it out of this war alive… Franzie Keppel did not. "I'm, uh… very sorry to hear that, Major," he managed to articulate without _too_ much of a frightened tremor in his voice.

"_I__'__m_ sorry I cannot say that you will be sitting right next to him on the express train to Pinsk."

"_My _record is above reproach, if I may remind you."

"I cannot seem to make a visit to this camp _without _you reminding me," Hochstetter squeezed through his teeth.

Both men turned when the door to Klink's office opened without a knock and Hogan entered. "Oh hi, Major… long time no see."

"What is this man doing here? Klink, is this your idea of confining all prisoners to the barracks as ordered?"

"Of course not, Major… Hogan, you will return to the barracks at once."

"I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes, _Kommandant. _The men are getting restless with the barracks confinement and we were hoping we could get a few things to help pass the time."

"What sort of things?"

"Well, LeBeau's been telling us about his uncle who tends the grounds at Versailles… we were thinking we might give topiary a try. We'd need some graph paper, charcoal pencils, a few pairs of hedge clippers, some pruners, an electric saw… oh, and some trees."

"_Inside_ the barracks?"

"Well, you won't let us go _outside_; that's the whole problem."

"Hogan, get out," Hochstetter ordered.

"Just asking." The detonator in the middle of Klink's desk was the proverbial elephant in the middle of the room; Hogan knew from long experience that if he _didn__'__t _remark on it he would automatically arouse unwanted suspicion. "Hey, where'd that come from?"

"From a bridge less than two miles away from this camp," Hochstetter informed him.

"Funny thing to keep on a bridge, isn't it?"

"_Ja__… _isn't it_…_?" The major made eye contact with Hogan and held it. As always, Hogan calmly met his gaze and didn't look away… there was no guilt, no fear at all in those eyes. He had nerves of steel, this American officer. It had never stopped gnawing at Hochstetter, ever since the first day he and Hogan had first encountered one another, that this man knew much, _much _more than he ever let on about what went on outside this camp, but he had never been able to trip Hogan up. Not _yet,_anyway. "Colonel Hogan, it might interest you to know that this detonator is American-made."

"No kidding? Must have cost you guys a fortune to get it shipped over here. Don't tell me we make better detonators in America than the master race does right here in Germany. I wouldn't let that get around if I were you; that's the kind of thing that could really hurt some feelings in Berlin."

Hochstetter knew better than to take that bait. "Thank you for your concern, Colonel Hogan, but Berlin does not need any support from you."

"Just trying to be helpful."

"You will return to your barracks immediately."

"By the way, Major, as long as I'm here… any word on when your big digging project outside the wire will be completed? We'd like to do an article on it for the camp newspaper."

Hochstetter calmly drew his sidearm from his holster and leveled it at Hogan. "I will arrange for an escort to the cooler if you find confinement to the barracks so objectionable."

"Guess not… okay, I'm going, I'm going."

Hogan could hear the sound of voices start up again once the door had firmly closed behind him. There was no one in the outer office at the moment; he knew he could stay right here and listen if he wanted to. But why bother with that old gimmick of putting an empty water glass up to the door, when they had a much better eavesdropping system right in his quarters? He turned up his jacket collar, tilted his cap back on his head, and headed for the barracks… exactly as ordered. What more could the Krauts ask for?

oo 0 oo

The rest of the men had had exactly the same thought about listening in, and the coffee pot was already on his desk and plugged in when he arrived. "No luck," he announced as he entered.

"We heard," LeBeau nodded. "But you got the conversation started, at least."

Klink's voice was just in the middle of saying, "_I __had __been __meaning __to __ask __you __about __that __myself, __Major.__"_

_"What is going on outside the camp is none of your concern, Klink. You have more than enough to tax your capabilities inside the wire."_

"_I disagree. The responsibility for everything that occurs in and around this camp is mine, and I respectfully request additional information. I'm entitled to that."_

_"Klink, I am warning you..."_

The reception suddenly fizzled and Hochstetter's reply was lost in a surge of static. "What gives?" Hogan asked.

"It's been acting up lately." Kinch gave it a solid rap with his knuckles. "There must be a loose wire... haven't had a chance to break it down and take a look."

"..._until __there...__have __not __been __authorized...__find __it __necessary __to...__must __I..._" In spite of Hochstetter's customary elevated volume level that rose in direct proportion to his increasing level of irritation with Klink, they still weren't getting the whole conversation.

Kinch grasped the wooden handle and gave the coffee pot a solid rap against the desk, and then the sound of Klink's meek reply to Hochstetter's garbled threat was crystal clear. "_I __understand, __Major. __It __will __not __be __necessary __to __involve __Herr __Himmler._" Then, with false cheerfulness edged with dread, _"__Thank __you __for __offering, __though__…"_

"Kinch, you have the delicate touch of a surgeon," Hogan said.

"I don't think I'd care to have him operatin' on _me_," Newkirk put in. "Lacks a bit of the old bedside manner, I'd say."

"If you don't get out of the way the next time somebody shoots at you, you might not have any choice who your doctor is," Carter reminded him.

"Oh, do me a favor…"

"All right, all right," Hogan interrupted. "I'd like to listen to _those_ two clowns if it's okay with you. You guys can go on at intermission, how about that?"

"_Klink, __all __you __need __to __know __is __that __the __Gestapo __is __overseeing __every __detail. __The __munitions __bunker __will __be __completed __ahead __of __schedule__… __provided __you __can __keep __at __a __reasonable __distance __and __avoid __interfering __with __the __construction... __and __we __will __begin __to __store __armaments __on __site __immediately. __We __will __begin __with __the __confiscated __explosives __from __the attempt on the __Reismacher __Bridge._"

Hogan's frown deepened. "Oh, great… not only are they stockpiling weapons right next to the camp, they're swiping _ours _to start off their stash with!"

"We need that dynamite," Kinch reminded everyone. "We were already running low before, but now with all the added security outside the wire, there's no way to replenish our supply."

"Not to mention that we won't have any way to get in and out with the stuff after we close the tunnel off," Carter added.

"_Ça __alors__…_" LeBeau sighed. "Now what do we do?"

"I don't know about you, but I'm going to write a strong letter of protest to the Red Cross," said Hogan. "It's bad enough the Krauts are swiping our candy bars… taking a man's dynamite is the last straw."

"You've got a plan, Colonel?" Carter asked.

"I do?" Hogan unplugged the cord from the coffee pot and rested his chin pensively on his hand. "Good. I can't wait to find out what it is."


	7. Chapter 7

One thing you could say for the Gestapo: they were possessed of a remarkably industrious engineering force. No coffee breaks, no union meetings, and not a moment wasted. True to Major Hochstetter's prediction, the excavation outside the wire was completed well ahead of schedule. At about ten by ten by twelve feet, lined with cinderblocks, and capped with an inch-thick metal plate at ground level, it wasn't much to look at in the architecture department. Its tactical appeal, however, was indisputable.

"Downstairs" in the prisoners' tunnel system, the re-fill had proceeded just as rapidly, in between roll calls and staggered two-hour sleep shifts. With round-the-clock hard work and a few lucky breaks, the POWs had succeeded in keeping pace with the work being done above, and sealed off the emergency tunnel to allow the bunker to go in without exposing their operation.

"Well…" Hogan began to the group of exhausted men… and 'Private Byrd'… sitting around the table in the barracks. "We did it. And I'm proud of you. To look at it, no one would ever know there'd ever been a tunnel there in the first place."

"And it's breakin' my heart," Newkirk agreed, restlessly twirling the end of his cigarette against the edge of the ashtray. "So this is what bein' a _real _prisoner of war feels like."

"There's still Schnitzer and the dog truck," Carter reminded him. "He can always get us in and out, no problem."

"Sure," nodded Bluebird. "Once a month. How many roll calls would you guys miss in thirty days? Even Schultz would notice."

"And we can't bring our supplies in that way," LeBeau added. "Or by the hidden opening in the fence either."

"That's right," Kinch agreed. "That stuff's bulky. Radio parts, ammunition…"

"I'm talking about _important _supplies. _Food. _Do you realize how close I am to having to serve the slop the Krauts give us? You have seen your last _pâté _for a while, _mon __vieux._"

"That's a bonus I hadn't counted on," Newkirk couldn't resist. "Keep talkin', maybe you'll cheer me up yet."

"_Et __toi, __tu __mangerais __n__'__importe __quoi, __barbare __anglais!__"_

Hogan held up his hands for silence… there was no doubt in his mind that this exchange could take on a life of its own if he didn't nip it in the bud. Everyone was beat and tempers were short; the last thing they needed was for the Battle of Hastings to recreate itself right there in the barracks. "All right, all right. As I said, I'm proud of you. That was a lot of work, and you did it in record time."

"So what's next, Colonel?" Carter asked.

"I've given it a lot of thought, and there's only one obvious answer."

The five of them waited in silence. It wasn't necessarily so obvious to them, but the colonel was most often the idea man and they were all used to that. Whatever he had come up with would be vetted, discussed, there might be a certain amount of tweaking or trouble-shooting, a few slight modifications might be made, and then they would carry out his orders. Just like always.

Or, there could be full-scale mutiny. Hogan took a deep breath and said what he had to say, no sugar-coating. "Fellas… we have to dig _around_ the bunker."

He let the complaints go, loud and unchecked, for a full thirty seconds, to let them get it out of their systems… but there were still plenty more than hadn't been aired by the time he whistled loudly to regain the floor. "I know this isn't what you wanted to hear…"

"Bloody got _that_ right!" Newkirk interrupted. "You mean you want us to go back down there and start diggin' all over again, takin' out _all_ that dirt we just spent two days and two nights puttin' _in, _and take it all back _out _again? That's worse than the worst idea any of _us_ has ever come up with… that's flamin' Government work, that is!"

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but Newkirk's got a real good point," Kinch chimed in.

"Have any of you got a _better _idea how to get our supply, sabotage and escape activities back on track?" Hogan pressed, with that edge of urgency in his voice that the men had heard many times before and so far had never failed to respond to. "Okay, let's have it; I'm listening. The dog truck's a stopgap at best, and as already pointed out, it's basically a one-way trip until the next scheduled changing out of the dogs. The fence is no good either except in extreme emergencies; it's not gonna cut it as far as supporting our essential activities day in and day out. Anybody got anything else?" He focused on Newkirk; the outspoken corporal was still seething but had managed to hold his tongue at least for the moment. "Go ahead, Newkirk, give me something I can use. You don't like my idea, _fine_; come up with a better one and I'm all ears! You think I like it any better than you do? The fact is, now that they've got that bunker in the ground, we know exactly where it is and we can bypass it… go right around it, join up again with the tree stump exit on the other side. And then it's business as usual."

"You knew that was what we were going to end up doing the whole time we were working on closing off the tunnel, didn't you?" LeBeau asked grimly. "And you didn't dare tell us."

Hogan nodded. No sense lying to them; the truth was bad enough. "I hoped I'd come up with a better plan, but I haven't. Every day we stay shut down is a day German trains are running, supplies are getting through to combat units, and Allied fliers who get shot down and are lucky enough to make it to the ground in one piece have nowhere to go. It's costing _lives_, while you guys sit here and complain about a little dirt."

There was dead silence around the table for nearly half a minute. Everyone had their own picture in their mind's eye of what things might be like out there with the Stalag 13 operation shut down for good, or even for a significant period of time. The colonel was right. Their work here was vitally important to the war effort… much too important to let it end over something as simple as a few dozen yards of dirt.

Carter bravely spoke first. "I'm in."

Kinch nodded. "You can count on me."

"Me too," Bluebird said.

"_D__'__accord_," nodded LeBeau.

None of them sounded happy about it, but that wasn't a requirement… Hogan needed only their cooperation. "Okay, Newkirk," he said. "It's down to you." He had expected this; Newkirk was often the last one to give in when it came down to a tough decision. He had never disappointed; he had always eventually come around and worked as hard as anybody else to make something happen, even if he'd complained long and loud about it at the outset. He was just wired that way… and here at least his outbursts wouldn't earn him a place in the stockade, so this unique assignment was actually a pretty good fit for an opinionated and somewhat uncouth enlisted man who regularly forgot his military manners. Hogan fully realized that he asked a lot of his command, they were under a lot of pressure to perform, and he had never made an issue about Newkirk's proclivity towards being the resident wet-blanket before.

But this time Newkirk wasn't budging. His jaw clenched, the thumb and third finger of his right hand nearly pinched his cigarette in half.

There was a shovel leaning up against Carter's bunk, which someone – most likely Carter himself – had forgotten to leave down in the tunnel out of sight. Carter reached over, took it in hand, and very tentatively extended it to Newkirk, who eyed it with silent contempt.

"Okay, we'll do it without you," Hogan nodded. "It'll take longer. But I'm not going to spend all day making a case for your approval, Corporal. We're starting right now."

Crittendon chose that moment to scale the ladder up from below and join them, as energetic as ever. "By Jove, Hogan, that's quite the feat, I must say. One would never even know there had ever been a tunnel there in the first place. That earthen wall's as smooth as glass. Simply smashing job. Top hole."

Hogan gave a short, tense sigh. "Thanks, Crittendon… let's go; we're digging it out again."

"We're… we're _what, _old boy? I could have sworn I heard you say that we're digging it _out _again." He chuckled heartily. "Marvelous joke. Excellent Colonial humor. Must admit, you did have me going there for a moment. Your wit is razor-sharp. Absolutely…" He faltered a bit when he detected no humor at all either on Hogan's face or on the faces of anyone else at the table. "… razor… sharp…" His own face fell to match everyone else's as he realized what was happening. "You mean we're… really…?"

Hogan couldn't bring himself to say it again… and nobody wanted to _hear _it again. One by one, they stood up from the table, made their way to the trap door, and descended single-file down the ladder.

All, that is, except for Newkirk. He remained at the table, taking long drags on what remained of his flattened cigarette and exhaling the smoke through his nose. He was nearly steamed enough to be able to breathe smoke _without _a cigarette. Of all the bloody ridiculous things he had ever heard… _anywhere, _not just _here__… _the idea of going back down there and un-doing everything they had just done, which had been undoing everything they had done when they'd built the ruddy tunnel in the _first_ place; that took the biscuit. The colonel needed a good long stay in a rest home Stateside for coming up with that one, and anybody who followed that cockeyed order was fit more for a rubber room than for a prison barracks. It was crackers. It was completely barmy.

He flicked the end of his smoke into the bright red butt-can next to the stove, got to his feet, and headed for the ladder. If Carter even looked like he _might_ say 'I told you so', he was going to be one sorry Yank.

oo 0 oo

LeBeau hoisted the latest in an innumerable procession of buckets packed with loose earth, one hooked on each end of the broomstick that he bore across his shoulders. He was beginning to seriously doubt that he would ever be able to stand up straight again, and that particularly irked him because a man of his stature didn't have any room to spare in that department. He didn't know how many of those buckets he had lugged, two by two, to the dumping area east of the Barracks 5 tunnel, a little-used branch that they had decided to sacrifice, but it was _too _many, by far. "Where do I go to join the other side?" he groaned.

"You can stand right behind _me_," was Kinch's answer. "I don't know what I'm gonna tell 'em at the recruiting office, but they _have _to take me on as a Kraut."

There had been nothing but complaints ever since the digging had recommenced. Hogan couldn't say that he blamed them, and he hadn't done much to discourage them. But if they had the energy to beef, they had the energy to dig. And dig they did.

Even Newkirk. At first he'd wielded the pick with the fury of a man possessed, but he hadn't been able to keep that pace up for long and now was proceeding at a steady _wham, __wham, __wham _against the wall of the new tunnel… which used to be the _old_ tunnel. One thing was for sure, they were going to need some new system maps, particularly after they got to the dog-leg turn that would be necessary on the far side of the bunker. But at the moment it felt like they might never _reach_ the bunker.

Bluebird trailed LeBeau with another brimming bucket of fill for the dump; this one had rocks in it which made it too heavy for her to lift, so she dragged it along the ground walking backwards. "The first lousy stone wall I see when I get back to Maine after the war, I'm gonna blow it up."

"I'm trying to figure out where _I_ can go where I won't see any _dirt_," Carter told her. "_That__'__s_ gonna be tough."

_Wham, __wham__… __wham__… _went Newkirk's pick. He was slowing down considerably. Probably needed to switch positions with someone soon. Hogan was on his way over to relieve the corporal for a while when on the next swing the _wham _sound suddenly changed to a muffled _clunk_.

"Is that what I hope it is?" Kinch asked.

Hogan and Carter attacked the spot with shovels while Newkirk gladly stepped back for a breather. Seconds later they all saw what they had been eagerly anticipating: there was a cement-block wall waiting for them behind all that dirt.

"There it is," Hogan confirmed. "One brand-spanking-new munitions bunker."

"Smashin'…" Newkirk puffed. "Who cares? You might want to save your applause for the finale, because in case it's slipped your mind, we still need to go all the way _around_ the bleedin' thing."

"That's right, we do. But there's an interesting thing about it that I just noticed."

"Other than the fact that it's in our way?"

Hogan held up one of the kerosene lamps so it illuminated the area they had just exposed. "Take a good look at that wall."

The men did so. "So what?" LeBeau shrugged. "If you've seen one wall, you've seen them all."

"Not quite. This one's made of cement blocks, not poured concrete."

"It's still a flippin' _wall,_and we _still _have to dig _around _it," Newkirk insisted.

"Use your imagination for a minute. What would this wall look like if one of these blocks were taken out?"

"Like a wall with an 'ole in it."

Newkirk was missing the point. Hogan placed his hands one on either edge of one of the blocks they had just unearthed, right at the mortared seams, then moved his hands so they were one on either side of Bluebird. It was almost exactly the same distance… she was only slightly narrower, and that was exactly what he had been hoping for. "I think this looks more like a _bank_," Hogan nodded. "And I think we're going to be making some withdrawals. All we need is an inside man…" He glanced towards Bluebird again. "…or a reasonable facsimile thereof… and some fake dynamite."

"_Fake_ dynamite?" she echoed.

"Why not?" Hogan turned to Carter, always the go-to guy when it came to explosives of any description. "You can make up some dummy TNT, can't you?"

"Well… yeah, sure. Fakes are _easy_. All I'd need is some cardboard tubing, something to pack it with, and some ignition cord just for looks. I've got plenty of that stuff; it's just the actual black powder and nitro we're short on. But… _why_, Colonel?"

LeBeau nodded. "That's right. If we're going to steal dynamite, why not just take it?"

"We can't risk the Krauts noticing it's gone. They've just opened this setup and we don't know what their routine will be. They might take inventory. If they do that and they notice a steady drain on their stockpile, _we__'__re_ not gonna be too hard to find. If they don't realize anything's missing, they won't be looking for it."

"Makes sense," Kinch agreed.

"Get going on that, Carter. You can start with making up exact replicas of the charges you and Newkirk left on the Reismacher Bridge. We're going _back _to that bridge, and this time we're gonna renovate it. The rest of you…" He hated to say it, but he didn't have much choice. Hogan hoisted a shovel and plunged the business end into the mound of dirt still to be moved. "… keep digging."


	8. Chapter 8

Day, night… not much difference between the two this far underground. The passageway the prisoners were clearing for themselves was far from the standard roomy venue everyone was used to. No, this was strictly utilitarian… just the bare minimum amount of space required to get men and supplies back and forth. Later… _much _later, if the men had anything to say about it… they could go back and clean it up, get it closer to the state it had been in before the Gestapo had shown up and thrown a monkey wrench into their routine.

The long-awaited moment finally arrived when a shovel bit into dirt and sunk halfway up the handle when it met no resistance on the other side. Kinch was the lucky man… as well as the winner of the betting pool. Amidst a wave of cheers that lacked something in energy but nothing in sincerity, a small hole opened up, and with everyone falling on it with everything they had, it was soon wide enough to allow passage to the other side.

It _looked _to be clear, the twenty or thirty more feet of full-width tunnel from here to the tree stump exit, but Hogan had learned long ago not to take anything for granted in this war. "I'll check it out," he said, taking a lamp in hand and starting to climb through the opening. "Be right back."

He was as sick of the sight of these dirt walls as anybody else by now, but Hogan had to admit as he made his way along the remaining few yards to the exit that they were also beautiful, in a way. Tempers had been burning fast and hot, and it wasn't just because of all the extra hard work… there had also been a touch of old-fashioned claustrophobia affecting the boys as well, putting everyone on edge. Lately any minor difference of opinion had seemed more significant than it normally would have. A simple request to pass the salt had resulted in a dust-up just last night, when their temperamental French chef had taken offense at what he took as Carter's implication that everyone's dinner wasn't already perfectly seasoned, and then normally easy-going Andrew had insisted that he was entitled to his own opinion instead of meekly backing down as he most often did. It really _did _feel entirely different being in here when they knew they couldn't come and go as they pleased, effectively cut off from all life outside the camp. It had been hard on everyone.

Hogan scaled the ladder to the tree stump hatch and lifted it just an inch or two, barely far enough so he could see what was going on. A little bit of new snow had fallen the night before. No guards in sight. Hogan could see the gate, the barracks, the water tower, Klink's quarters, just like always. Nothing had changed. Everything was right there, just as it had been before, exactly as it had always looked from this vantage point before they'd been cut off.

Yet, something _was_ different. He sensed that he would never be able to take this for granted ever again, not for a single hour, for the duration of the war. The camp was so close, but it even _smelled _different out here… like tall pines and fresh snow, not like bedding in need of an airing, exhaust from the workshop at the motor pool, and sauerkraut from the sergeants' mess. Out here, it smelled like freedom.

Hogan secured the hatch and returned to the place where the two half-tunnels had become whole again. He had never claimed to be a philosopher, but he might have been tempted to share some of his observations with the fellows… had any of them been awake. It looked as though they'd all sat down on the dirt floor to wait for him to come back, and although he'd been gone barely five minutes, each and every one of them was sitting there, back to the wall and sound asleep.

Well, they'd earned it. Hogan headed for the radio room. Maybe Tiger was in a listening mood.

oo 0 oo

"Guess which one's real."

Carter held up two red-wrapped cylinders with string fuses sticking out of the tops, one in each hand. To the average eye, they were nearly identical.

Hogan nodded in approval as he took a closer look. "That's a great-looking fake, Carter. I'm impressed."

"Which one?" he grinned eagerly. "Go on, guess."

"_You__'__d _better know," Hogan told him. "It doesn't matter so much if _I _can't tell." He had the plans Tiger had originally brought in spread out on the desk in his office… and what was more, he once again had Tiger standing by his side. Well… he was a thorough man, and after all, he _did _want to make sure the tunnel still worked perfectly, in both directions… what better way to test it? "So here's the plan." He put his finger on the intersection of tunnel and bunker. "Newkirk and Bluebird will take a block out of the bunker wall here, remove the dynamite and caps to be used on the Reismacher Bridge, then replace the real stuff with Carter's fakes. Having to take the time to steal back our own stuff is making for a longer war, but I think you all appreciate the irony."

"We're ready," Bluebird confirmed.

Newkirk nodded in agreement. "Piece of cake."

"Be careful not to damage the block; it has to go right back in again when you're finished. We'll get back in there later and get a full inventory so Carter can make up a complete stock of replacements."

"And then we just keep switching the dummies for the live ammo until it's all out," LeBeau nodded.

"Which'll give the Krauts a nasty surprise when they try to use any of it," added Carter. "You don't get much of an explosion lighting up a roll of cardboard filled with shredded long-johns."

"Ah, _oui__… _that can be embarrassing under certain circumstances. Like if it happens in the middle of a war or something."

"They shouldn't be playing with matches anyway," Hogan said. "That's Carter's job."

Carter held up the two cylinders again. "You _sure_ you don't want to guess which one's which, sir?"

Hogan was spared having to gently remind his overeager munitions man, who sometimes displayed a little too _much _pride in his work, that they had a few other more urgent things on their agenda than guessing games, when the speaker on the coffee-pot receiver crackled to life with the sound of a door opening and closing. "I thought Klink was in his quarters."

"He is," LeBeau nodded. "I saw him go in there about five minutes ago and he ordered Langenscheidt on guard duty not to disturb him. That always means he's going to take a nap."

Then came the sound of the telephone receiver in the office being lifted. "_This __is __Major __Hochstetter __speaking.__"_

"The Kommandant oughta be more careful," Newkirk said. "When he don't shut that door tight, just look at all the vermin what crawl in."

"_Ja__… __connect __me __with __the __munitions __depot __at __Kleinburg._"

Hogan's eyebrow went up. "I wonder what that's all about."

"_I__ch möchte mit Kapitän Müller sprechen._"

"If he's callin' collect I'd be surprised if anybody'd take it," Newkirk said.

_"Guten Tag, Kapitän. Hochstetter here. I want… list… in…"_ Static poured out of the speaker, garbling the one-sided conversation.

"Isn't this thing fixed yet?" Hogan demanded. "It's just a loose wire, for Pete's sake."

"Sorry, _Colonel_, but we've been so busy with the digging…" LeBeau started.

"All right, all right… where's Kinch?"

"He's in the radio room; shall I go get him?"

Carter picked up the pot and knocked it against the edge of Hogan's desk. "This worked the last time."

_"… delivery… urgent…"_ And now the static was even louder.

"Well, it's not working _this_ time… stick to explosives," Hogan told him.

Bluebird took a look into the top of the pot. "Hang on." She took the chewing gum out of her mouth, pulled off a small wad and reached down through the top of the pot to stick it onto the troublesome connection at the very bottom.

_"Yes, Captain, I want the complete list of all the explosives you've arranged to deliver to the new munitions bunker here at Stalag 13."_

In response to the surprised looks she was getting from those around the table, she simply shrugged. "I'm in the radio room a lot… I watch Kinch when he fixes things."

Newkirk's expression wasn't so much one of surprise as distaste. "That's revoltin'."

"Is it _working_?" she challenged.

"At the moment," he had to admit, albeit grudgingly.

"Then don't knock it, Bigmouth."

"_Ja… read it to me, and I will check it against the bill of lading. I want to make sure everything is accounted for. This initiative is too important to leave anything to chance." _There was a pause, then he continued. _"Six dozen sticks of TNT… ja… one hundred detonator caps…_"

Carter grabbed a pencil and began to take it all down. "How 'bout that? We won't have to take an inventory; he's reading us the whole list."

"He's gonna spoil us," Hogan said.

"You trust what this major says?" Tiger asked with a certain amount of reserve. "Are you sure that is wise?"

"Sure, why not? He's never lied to us yet… well, not when he didn't know we were listening, he hasn't." He gave her a reassuring smile. "I figure it always makes sense to take the easy throws that come our way… they'll start pitching curveballs and change-ups again soon enough."

The office door opened and Crittendon joined them. "Greetings, chaps."

Hogan's smile vanished. "See what I mean?"

Whatever Crittendon might have had in mind when he had entered Hogan's office, he seemed to forget all about it when he saw Tiger. "Well… hello again…"

She nodded politely. "_Bonjour, Colonel._"

"Oh, I say… you _are_ French, aren't you…?" He actually appeared rather flustered, not a look that they were used to seeing on the by-the-book officer. "And I must say… dashed pretty, to boot."

"Colonel, Tiger is one of our allies," Hogan reminded him. "And I think we'd like to keep it that way. Okay?"

Crittendon immediately switched to a _sotto voce _tone that he imagined was discreetly man-to-man… as usual, though, it escaped him that everyone in the room was plenty close enough to overhear. "I do beg your pardon, old boy… fact is, though, I'm finding myself somewhat driven to distraction… other than this delightful creature I haven't so much as _glimpsed_ a young lady in quite some time, as it happens…"

"Well, that's a real shame, sir," Newkirk spoke up loudly, giving Bluebird a chummy punch in the arm. "In'nit, Hugh?" The look of outrage on her face was priceless… all these months working out of this stalag she'd wanted nothing more than to be treated like just another one of the lads and would accept nothing less, but now that someone actually _took _her for one, it seemed she didn't like it one bit. And that was okay with Newkirk. Bluebird was almost as much fun to wind up as LeBeau was, and sooner or later she always gave back as good as she got, which made it sporting. She was all right, that one. Worth her salt and then some.

The door opened again and Schultz entered. "Colonel Hogan, I…" His wide blue eyes found Bluebird first. "I…" Then they moved a few feet to the left and stopped on Tiger. "I…" Finally, against any advice he would have given himself if he had been capable of thinking straight at that point… which he wasn't… Schultz turned his head again and recognized Colonel Crittendon. "I see nothing! _No-thing!_" He was out the door so fast it was almost as if he had never come through it in the first place.


	9. Chapter 9

Using a chisel and a mallet, or "the persuader" and "the convincer" as they were occasionally known during these types of break-ins, Newkirk and Bluebird finished chipping away at the mortar and removed one cement block from the wall of the bunker in less than five minutes. As Hogan had reminded them, it was important to work carefully enough not to show any damage. And speaking of 'damage': the _last _thing they wanted to do was hit _any_ block in that wall too hard. There was no way to know what was right on the other side of it, and it could be something pretty unstable… like a percussion mine. Hopefully, getting just one out would be all they'd need… the smaller the hole, the smaller the chance the Germans would ever notice it.

Newkirk shone the flashlight into the pitch-dark recess, then smiled at what the yellowish beam revealed. "Blimey… there's more in here than we can use up in six months. I wish Carter was here; this is his idea of Christmas mornin'." He backed away from the hole. "All right, go ahead and do your trick."

Bluebird squeezed head-first through the small waist-high opening. It made for a tight fit, even for someone her size. A heavy, stomach-turning smell hung in the stale air of the bunker, a cross between overripe bananas and oil. From months of sabotage experience, she knew that odor came from the nitroglycerine in the dynamite. She knew one other thing for sure: she didn't want to spend any more time in there than was absolutely necessary.

Once the soles of her boots were clear of the opening, Newkirk held the light so she could see what she was doing. "Don't get greedy, now; on this trip we just need enough to finish up the Reismacher Bridge. We'll be back for the rest later."

The boxes were of varying shapes and sizes, but all said _Explosiv, __Vorsicht, _or some other succinct variation on the hazardous-materials theme, in large red block-letters. Bottom line, this was no playpen… it paid to watch one's step very carefully.

Bluebird soon had her hands on the very same carton of explosives that had come from their first attempt at blowing the bridge. She gently parted the flaps on top to confirm the contents, then carried it with extreme care over to the opening in the cinderblock wall. "The caps must be in another box."

"Safer that way." He took the carton she passed through to him and set it very gingerly down on the ground by his feet.

"They've gotta be here somewhere. Give me some more light in the far corner; there are some smaller boxes over there."

He adjusted the angle of the flashlight beam in the direction she indicated. "That's a lovely bit of breakin' and enterin', I must say. You might even make corporal for this."

"Why not?" she tossed over her shoulder. "_You _managed."

"Me old squadron commander said he wanted to make sure he had somethin' to bust me down to the next time I shot me mouth off. And _vwah-la_, as me ol' mate LeBeau would say… 'ere I am a corporal."

In spite of the tension-charged situation, she couldn't help laughing. "Are you serious?"

"Joke's on him, though. I ended up in 'ere, and now I'm Colonel Hogan's problem… stripes and all." He tried to fit both his head and the flashlight into the opening in the wall, too anxious to just stand and wait for her to finish up. "Any luck with them caps?"

"This might be it." She lifted down a small square box from a shelf and took a quick look inside. "Bingo. I hope they're all here."

"They'd better be; we need 'em all. Give 'em here. Easy does it_._"

After Newkirk had refilled the boxes with Carter's dummy stock, she took them back through the hole in the wall, one at a time, replacing both boxes exactly where she had found them. "We should've had the Krauts install one of these a long time ago," she said. "Our own neighborhood bomb market, and they're open all night."

"Pity they don't give stamps, eh?" When she had squeezed back through the opening as far as her waist, Newkirk grasped her under the arms, gave a tug, then set her feet down on the dirt floor. "That's like pullin' a size-five rabbit out of a size-four hat. Now gimme a hand with this block."

oo 0 oo

Hogan checked his watch. "It's supposed to be a twenty-minute job. Where are they?"

"You sent Newkirk and Bluebird," Kinch reminded him. "Sometimes that's twenty minutes for the job and another twenty for the argument."

"On the bright side, we haven't heard any explosions," LeBeau offered.

Hogan was about to send LeBeau into the tunnel to check up on them when the door to his quarters opened and Newkirk and Bluebird both entered. "All set, sir," Newkirk reported. "The real stuff's in the main tunnel and Carter's fakes are in the bunker in the Krauts' original boxes."

"Any problems?"

"No sir," Bluebird answered. "And we can get that block out again easy, anytime… slides out like a drawer."

Newkirk nodded in agreement. "And _she_ slides _in_, nice as you please. Fits her like a glove."

"Don't grow anymore," Hogan told Bluebird. "That's an order." Then he turned to Tiger. "Looks like we'll have some fireworks after all."

"If we could be in time to stop the next train?" she asked with hopefulness in her tone.

"It's possible. We'll try for it. But if we hit any snags…"

Carter burst into the office in a panic. "Krauts coming this way! Schultz, Klink, _and _Hochstetter!"

_If _they hit any snags? Hogan should have known by now; such was inevitable.

LeBeau yanked the metal door of the nearby locker open; Hogan half-lifted, half-pushed Tiger inside, then tossed his flight jacket over her head just before he slammed the door shut. It was a desperate maneuver; it wouldn't help hide her if Hochstetter opened it up, because showing plainly below the waistband of the jacket was a pair of sleek legs that could understudy Betty Grable any day. At least Crittendon had gone back down into the tunnel; that was something.

Bluebird dove for the empty under-bunk area and rolled as far back as she could go. Something small and hard jammed into her hip; she reached for it and grasped a sprung, and thankfully empty, rat-trap. Someone, she couldn't see who, thought to pull the edge of the thin blanket that was spread on the bunk down to within an inch of the floor, giving her more cover. She could barely see three pairs of boots and two pairs of shoes as the men scattered. Then three _more _pairs of boots entered the room. Schultz's were wide and flat just like the feet they contained, Klink's were narrower and had more polish. Hochstetter's were the darkest black. No surprise there.

A moment before the door had opened, Hogan and the rest of the men had assumed carefully-practiced 'innocent positions'. A trusting casual visitor would immediately believe they had been there for some time and there was absolutely nothing amiss of any kind.

But the Gestapo was never either trusting _or_ casual. "What is going on in here, Hogan?" Hochstetter demanded before Schultz had even had time to attempt to call the men to attention. Schultz looked both amazed and immeasurably relieved to find no one present in the office that wasn't supposed to be there; his face went from abject terror to shock to sheer delight in a matter of a few seconds. Where had the two _frauleins _and that Englander gone? Hans Schultz, sergeant of the guard at the toughest POW camp in all of Germany, didn't care. Not one little bit. _Nichts._The only thing that mattered was, they were not here for the Kommandant and the Gestapo to find. Schultz, an acknowledged master of 'I see nothing', always found that he liked it best when there was really absolutely nothing at all _to_ see.

"Hi, Major. Oh, just reading to the men… _Reader__'__s __Digest _arrived today; we're working on 'It Pays to Enrich Your Word Power'." Hogan held up the pocket-sized magazine he had yanked from his desk seconds before, a perfectly innocent object to have and a perfectly innocent thing to be doing. Nothing at all to hide… right? Just two female agents in a very small room in an all-male POW camp. "Now, who can give me the definition of the word 'rebarbative', and use it correctly in a sentence?"

"Is that spelled with an _e_-_t _or an _a-t, _sir?" Kinch asked.

"I think it's _a-i-t_," LeBeau said.

"Any guesses, Major?" Hogan offered. "The winner of this round gets a whole package of ginger snaps, plus bragging rights."

Hochstetter began to walk, slowly and methodically, around the room, stopping in front of each man in turn to make direct eye contact. He didn't act as though he was looking for anything in particular, or even as if he had any indication of what type of thing he was looking _for_; not even how big or small it might be. But he was nonetheless looking very, very carefully. "Colonel Hogan, would you mind telling me why, now that your barracks restriction is over, you and your men have chosen to remain inside on such a pleasant afternoon? You seemed to be quite inconvenienced by the confinement as I recall earlier discussing with you. I am curious as to _why_."

"Some of the boys aren't feeling so well. Didn't want to take a chance going outside, you know… spreading some kind of virus around the camp. Could be highly contagious. In fact, we're in kind of a voluntary quarantine in here right now; you might not want to stand so close to them."

Well, it worked on Klink… he retreated two paces until his back pressed against the door, leaving him nowhere else to go. "I told you, Major… there's absolutely nothing going on in here. Now, if you would care to return to my office, we can…"

"There is _always _something going on around Hogan," Hochstetter assured the colonel in a voice that sounded like someone scraping the bottom of a gravel pit with a metal blade. He took another step towards the green locker, then turned to gauge Hogan's reaction to his proximity. Hogan shrugged and turned his eyes back to the page of the magazine. Inwardly, every nerve was on fire. If Hochstetter opened that locker door and found Tiger, they would have a choice to make, and fast: fight and risk blowing their whole operation, or watch the Gestapo take her and hope they could find a way to get her back. He honestly didn't know which way it would break, and he hoped he wouldn't have to find out.

Hochstetter considered the locker for another few long, agonizing seconds, and then walked past it. Hogan felt his heartbeat slide back down closer to its normal rate. "Okay, we're still on 'rebarbative'… anybody?"

"Is it something you find in a barber shop?" Carter piped up.

Hogan shook his head. "Good guess. But no."

Schultz raised his own pudgy hand eagerly. "Is it a kind of barbed wire?" Klink gave his fingers a sharp strike with his riding crop, and the sergeant pulled the hand back down to his side, shaking it briskly to ease the sting.

Hogan did his best to look impressed. "Not bad, Schultz… and this from a man whose first language isn't even English! You're not right, but it's the best guess yet. Now come on, fellas, put your thinking caps on. _Rebarbative. _I'll start giving out hints pretty soon if nobody gets any warmer."

Hochstetter lifted the corner of the mattress on the top bunk and peered underneath. Unfortunately for them, the only one getting 'warmer' was the tenacious Gestapo major… he'd just passed within inches of Tiger hiding in the locker, and he was now standing close enough to Bluebird for her to be able to count the click-marks on the heels of his glossy black boots. But, satisfied that there was nothing under the flimsy ticking except slats, he let go of it and walked on.

"Okay," Hogan continued, "I'll give you a hint. It's an adjective, and it describes something in this room."

"'Nosy'?" Carter ventured, as he watched Hochstetter pace towards the door, pulling a girlie picture away from the wall and taking a glance behind it as he did so.

That was closer than anything that had been suggested before… according to the article, the actual definition of _rebarbative _was 'that which is objectionable or irritating', and that certainly described Hochstetter to a T. As did a lot of other words, many of which would not be suitable for _Reader__'__s __Digest._

"Major, please," Klink spoke up. "I have a date… I mean, a strategy meeting… this evening that I must prepare for."

"With you, Klink, a date and a strategy meeting are practically the same thing." The major turned to face Hogan again. "All right; I've wasted enough of my time here today. I will see you again soon, Colonel Hogan."

"Drop by anytime. Thursday's our weekly squaredance. Hey, we still need a caller."

"_Square __dance_?" Hochstetter repeated with genuine lack of comprehension. Then, almost as an afterthought, he reached down and lifted the edge of the mattress on the bottom bunk. If he had not still been boring into Hogan's eyes with his own, Basic Gestapo Intimidation Technique 1-A, he would have been able to see that the two boots he had just uncovered beneath that bunk had feet in them.

LeBeau dove for the bunk and landed prone on the partially-raised mattress, effectively flattening it out again. "Excuse me, sir… I really _don__'__t _feel well… in fact, I think I may faint…"

The Frenchman _did _look ill, the major acknowledged… pale as a ghost. Perhaps there was something to their claims of sickness in the barracks after all. When LeBeau realized that he was having an effect, he gave it another level of credibility by starting to cough loudly, which was enough to get all three Germans out the door in record time.

Carter opened the locker door and Hogan reached in to gently lift Tiger out. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he lowered her feet to the floor, but he didn't let her go because he could feel her trembling. "That was _way _too close."

Newkirk bent to pick a dusty cobweb from Bluebird's hair as she crawled out from under the bunk. "My goodness me, look at the state of you, Hugh. You're a sight. You should take a page out of Colonel Crittendon's book… always very well turned-out, is our Colonel Crittendon."

Thinking too hard about how close that had actually been was exactly the _wrong_ thing to do, Bluebird knew, so Newkirk was actually doing her a favor. What was more, he probably knew it. Her hands were shaking as she handed the sprung rat-trap, which she found she had been clenching during the entire ordeal, over to Newkirk. "You want crackers with your cheese?" she managed to say.

"Are we still going out tonight, Colonel?" Kinch asked.

Hogan nodded. "We've got a train to catch."

"Boy, it's gonna look like the Fourth of July in Washington DC!" Carter exclaimed with his usual eagerness whenever explosives were involved. "The sky'll be lit up for miles around!"

"And when we're finished I want it to look like New Year's Day in Times Square," Hogan added. "A big expensive mess that'll take forever to clean up."


	10. Chapter 10

After evening roll call… and also after Schultz had made a not-so-surprise barracks inspection an hour after that and found everything in apple-pie order, much to his own amazement and satisfaction… everyone converged in the tunnel to prepare for the evening's festivities. It promised to be a real blast, if everything went according to the plan.

LeBeau stood on a chair while Newkirk, dressed as a Gestapo captain, made a few last-minute alterations to his civilian disguise and Carter, also in SS uniform, carefully glued a small, neat moustache to the Frenchman's upper lip. "Hey, that looks good on you, Louis," Carter nodded in approval. "Maybe you oughta grow one of your own."

Lebeau consulted his reflection in the small hand mirror without much enthusiasm. "I look like my grandfather."

"Who's your grandfather, Charlie Chaplin?" Bluebird asked. She and Kinch, neither of them ever terribly convincing as German foot-soldiers through no fault of their own, both wore the basic black favored by well-dressed Allied saboteurs at the height of the 1942 European-theater fashion season.

"I think he looks like Clark Gable." Carter turned to Kinch, who was checking his pistol. "Kinch, doesn't LeBeau look like Clark Gable?"

Kinch tipped a glance in LeBeau's direction. "Maybe if he stays on the chair… but don't we need him on the mission?"

"_Ah __oui, _very funny," LeBeau bristled. Unfortunately, he had to admit it was more or less true… up on that chair, he was eye-to-eye with the tall sergeant for the first time he could remember.

"Will you stop your fidgetin'?" Newkirk gave the heavily-patched wool jacket a firm tug to even it out, pulling LeBeau's shoulders back. "I dunno, Louis, you don't look much like a local if you ask me. There's somethin' missin'."

"Maybe he'd look more authentic to you if he was holding a shotgun loaded with rock salt," Kinch suggested.

Newkirk sent him a withering glare. "Oh, you're just loaded with charm tonight, Kinch. Have you ever considered vaudeville?" He went back to his disagreement with the still-uneven hem of LeBeau's coat. "It's always the quiet ones, ain't it Louis? Right when you least expect it, they turn on you."

Hogan entered, also dressed in head-to-toe black, with Tiger at his side. His face, like the faces of everyone not dressed in German uniform, was smudged with black. _Unlike_ anyone else's, Hogan's was also smudged with a flash of bright-red lipstick near the corner of his mouth. His subordinates duly noted it but chose not to bring it to his attention. "Let's get _this_ job over with before we think about taking on any part-time work, okay?" He gave his team a visual once-over. So far so good. "Everybody know their part? LeBeau, I want you to put up a real fight when Carter and Newkirk grab you… attract a lot of attention, yell, struggle, be loud, be difficult, be…"

"Newkirk! I think you want Newkirk for this, _Colonel_." He hopped down off the chair. "I'll go get changed."

"_Hold_ it."

"But…"

"Look, all you have to do is get captured… how hard is that?"

"_That__'__s_ not the hard part; the part that comes _after_ that is what can be a problem. Like if those sentries at the bridge get nervous and decide to turn me over to the _real _Gestapo?"

"I'm betting they won't."

"Do I have a choice whether or not to _take_ that bet?"

"No. Carter?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Got the dynamite ready?"

Andrew nodded eagerly, indicating the box on the tunnel floor at the bottom of the ladder. "Oh, I sure do, sir. All set, ready to blow… er, _go._"

"And this is the _real _stuff… you didn't get it mixed up with all those fakes you've been cranking out?"

Carter's eyes glanced upwards, and he appeared ever so slightly unsure… and that wasn't a comforting thought when high-explosives were concerned. There had been a _lot _of fake dynamite lying around lately. Andrew knew he had a system for keeping track of which was which. A really good one. But… was it _perfect_? "Um…"

"What'd you have to go and do that for, sir?" Newkirk asked. "Now _I__'__m _lookin' for a way out of this one."

"I'm _sure _it's the real stuff," Carter nodded, sounding like he was trying to convince himself of that as much as anyone else.

"_Completely_ sure?" Hogan pressed.

Carter reached for a stick. "Well, I could light one and…"

"_Carter_!"

"I was just gonna say that on the fakes the fuse would spark more blue than yellow 'cause of the black-powder ratio I used… don't worry, there'd still be time to pull it out if I was wrong." It looked like six people were perfectly willing to break his arm if he tried to strike a match, though… so instead, Carter cautiously sniffed the red-rolled cylinder in his hand. The familiar aroma of old bananas confirmed what it was made of beyond a shadow of doubt. "_Oh_ yeah…" he nodded with complete certainty this time. "This is the good stuff, all right."

"Carter, one of these days…" But there was no time to go into that now. "Everybody all set?" Hogan asked. Five heads nodded, and Tiger pressed his hand to indicate that she was also ready. "Let's go." Hogan holstered his pistol, started up the ladder, reached the tree-trunk trap door that led to the outside, gave it a push…

… and nothing happened.

"What's wrong, sir?" Newkirk called up.

Hogan gave another hard shove with his shoulder. The trap door refused to budge.

oo 0 oo

Colonel Crittendon waited patiently in the darkness for Hogan and his crew to join him. It was rather a lovely evening, he noted, even considering the fact that it was Germany, after all. Slight breeze, not too cold. The night sky was a perfect royal-blue, softly lit with a crescent moon and sprinkled with stars. A light coating of snow frosted the landscape and clung to the pine trees. He checked his watch again.

"You're a bit late, old boy," he chuckled to himself. "Bad habit, that… the trains should always run on time, what? Still and all, no one's perfect. Excellent unit, right down to a man. Can't imagine what's keeping them." He leaned forward and rested his elbow on his knee. He hoped Hogan and his men would hurry.

Sitting on a tree stump was deucedly uncomfortable.

oo 0 oo

"I'm gonna kill him," Hogan fumed as he and LeBeau crouched in the shadow of the barracks behind a rain barrel.

"He's on _our_ side," LeBeau reminded his commander. "I think."

"No he's not. I think the Krauts hired him. I think he's on their payroll, drawing marks and pfennigs from a paymaster with swastikas on his cufflinks, and sending them all to a nice Swiss bank account every month. I think all this 'pip-pip and cheerio' stuff is the most brilliant disguise of the war. I think if _they_ win, Crittendon's gonna get the Iron Cross and a big kiss on both cheeks from Hitler himself. _That__'__s _what _I_ think!"

Hogan rarely lost his temper, and LeBeau was glad of that because he found that it unnerved him considerably on the rare occasions when it did happen. It probably wasn't a good career move to shush one's commanding officer, but their moment had nearly arrived and he felt it was necessary. "Light!" he whispered urgently.

The two of them remained motionless in the deep shadows as the searchlight from Tower Two made its expected silent sweep across the fence, the door and shuttered windows of Barracks Four, and moved on.

They sprinted the short distance to the wire, took the time for only the briefest of glances into the nearby woods to see if there were any patrols visible, then Hogan slid the garage-door-style panel of the fence upwards, allowing them both to duck underneath and then roll the wire wall shut behind them. Seconds later, the forest had swallowed them up. By the time the searchlight made another pass over the area, there was nothing to see.

oo 0 oo

Crittendon leapt to his feet and made a clumsy grope for his sidearm when he heard rustling in the nearby woods. Before he even had the pistol out of its holster, Hogan and LeBeau stood in front of him. "Hogan, old bean, what kept you?" he smiled smoothly.

As soon as his weight was off the hinged panel concealed in the stump, it lifted up exactly as designed and Kinch clambered out, shaking his head in silent frustration. "_That__'__s _what kept us," Hogan snapped. "Colonel, you were sitting on our exit!"

"_Was_ I?" He turned to look. "Terribly sorry. Won't happen again."

No, it wouldn't… because _next _time, Hogan promised himself, he would _order _Carter to light a stick of dynamite. A _real _one.

One by one, his team made their way out of the tunnel and stayed low to the ground, ever mindful of the sweeping pattern of the searchlights. Newkirk dropped to a crouch beside Bluebird, so angry he could hardly see straight. "Of all the knuckle-headed, half-witted, lame-brained plonkers…" He stopped there, already finding himself out of clean-ish words to describe Crittendon.

"Did that guy _break _out of Stalag 6, or did he _flunk _out?" she asked him.

"And for 'im, this is a _good _night. You oughta see him when he _really_ comes a cropper."

"Get the stuff and let's go," Hogan ordered. "We're on the clock."

"If I might make a suggestion…" Crittendon began. He stopped short when he got a good look at Hogan's face in the moonlight. He didn't look at all receptive. "On the other hand… never mind… perhaps later…"


	11. Chapter 11

The Reismacher Bridge looked exactly as it had the last time those who had already been there had left it. The northbound span stopped very suddenly in the middle and became a pile of randomly-stacked timber and girders in the river below. The southbound span crossed the river gorge uninterrupted.

And heavily-guarded.

"Just what I thought," Hogan reported, scanning the scene below through binoculars. "There's a guard posted on the bridge at the track level, and another one below on a gangway in the infrastructure. They're not taking any chances with what's left of it."

"Will LeBeau be enough of a distraction to get 'em both out of there?" Kinch asked.

"We only need the sentry underneath the tracks to respond. If the other one leaves his post too, that's a bonus."

"For _who_?" LeBeau, apparently, was still rather nervous about the part he was about to play.

"Like I said, kick up a big racket and we'll hope for the best. Carter, Newkirk, try and keep the action out of the line of sight of the trusswork… we'll need all the cover we can get when we get out there. The ground fog will help some."

"Never known fog to stop a bullet," Newkirk put in.

"Remind me again why we bring you along? I know it's not for pep talks." Hogan folded the binoculars and replaced them in the case Tiger carried over her shoulder. "Okay, let's go. We'll meet back here for the detonation. And it doesn't go up until we _all _get back, so nobody stop for coffee and a newspaper on the way. Good luck."

Luck had never been known to stop bullets either, and LeBeau couldn't help remembering that fact as he maneuvered stealthily down the hillside, keeping one eye on the bridge sentries and the other on the position Carter and Newkirk would soon be taking up down below. His German wasn't perfect, but it was as good as anyone else's, particularly with the colonel preferring to stay up on the bridge to make sure nothing went wrong this time. Carter always had to watch his tendency to break into English when he got nervous, Newkirk had his hands full just giving a standard _Heil __Hitler _while remembering not to drop the leading _h_'s so as to _'__eil__ '__itler_ instead, and Kinch… well, Kinch made a pretty lousy Nazi no matter _how_ you looked at it. So _bonne __chance __monsieur,_with a side order of _viel __Glück __Meinherr, _Louis sighed to himself. Sometimes it felt like this war would never be over.

A small stone slipped out from underneath his foot and rolled down the bank, making a solid _plunk _sound when it hit the water. LeBeau froze. Thirty feet above him, so did the sentry underneath the tracks. He couldn't see the man clearly in the darkness, but Louis _could_ see the glow of the ember at the end of his cigarette. It stopped short when the sound came, then didn't resume its slow back-and-forth motion for another long minute, a minute made even longer because Louis held his breath the entire time. At last, the sentry appeared convinced that it was nothing more than a fluke or a fish, neither of them worth his time to investigate, and he continued to walk his post back and forth on the gangway.

Their job was to get that man _off_ that gangway so the others could set the dynamite charges. As soon as he saw Carter and Newkirk get into position about ten yards downstream, close enough to prevent the bridge sentries from firing and risking injury to anybody they would hopefully believe to be on _their_ side, LeBeau began to run along the riverbank underneath the bridge, slowly enough for them to easily catch up to him, making as much noise as humanly possible as he plowed through the low brush. Newkirk helped in the noise department by shouting "_Halt! __Halt!_" at the top of his lungs… and, LeBeau noted, he had even remembered to pronounce the _h_. Maybe it was going to be their night after all.

Both bridge sentries turned to look, and as soon as their backs were turned Hogan and his crew headed towards the bridge, stopping just short of the gangway and waiting for their chance. Below, LeBeau had gotten himself 'caught' without being too obvious about it, and Carter held him by the collar of his jacket while he loudly protested his treatment in German slightly accented with an Alsace/Lorraine flavor. "_Was __ist __los_?" the sentry posted on the catwalk underneath the tracks shouted down.

"We caught this man approaching the bridge!" Carter yelled up at him. "He has no papers! He may be a saboteur!"

The sentry's eyes lit up with anticipation. "A saboteur? Bring him up here!"

Well, that was exactly what they _didn__'__t _want to do. But they had anticipated such a possibility and LeBeau was ready for his next sprint. "Okay, let me go," he whispered to Carter, who released the back of his jacket; LeBeau then took off again like an entry in the Daily Double at Longchamp racetrack.

_"__Halt!__" _Carter yelled after him. Then he snickered to himself and gestured after his fleeing friend with pride. "Wow, look at him go!"

"Runs like a rabbit," Newkirk nodded. "And just about the same size, too." To the sentry waiting above, he shouted, "He's getting away! _Helfen Sie uns, schnell!_"

The sentry hesitated for only a couple of heartbeats, then made his decision and started down the embankment toward the river, calling back to the guard at track-level to remain at his post.

That was the opening Hogan's crew had been waiting for. He, Kinch and Bluebird climbed cautiously onto the catwalk, each holding one bundle of dynamite, the necessary fuses, and a length of wire to connect each bundle to the next one, daisy-chain style. From there the three charges would all connect to the main wire that led to the detonator. It was a get-in/get-out operation, and as fast as possible. All three of them had considerable experience with bridge demolition, they all understood basic engineering principles, tension and compression, and knew exactly where to place their charges to get the most 'bang' for the buck.

Of course, no operation was ever quite perfect. "You're sure I can't be of any help to you, old boy?" Crittendon asked for at least the third time. He stood over Hogan's shoulder, following his every move as the American officer worked to fuse the explosive charge. "I've worked a bit of demolition myself now and again. Once had my own crew, in fact."

"I remember," Hogan cut him off. He unwound a four-foot-long length of black tape and began to secure it around his bundle of TNT sticks, then around the bridge support. "You told us. And I think your story ended with the words 'may they rest in peace', didn't it?"

Crittendon removed his cap and held it over his heart for a few seconds. "Yes… yes, I'm afraid so."

"Fine. I don't want you to have any _more_ of those kinds of stories to tell. Which is why I want you to stand right _here _and don't move a muscle."

"Well, then, perhaps I could take down that Gerry guard for you. Use a spot of the old killer judo, what?"

"I don't think so." After all, that so-called 'killer judo' of his didn't count for much when his victims could only die laughing. The last guard he'd tried it on had thought he was getting a massage, not a death blow.

"Dash it all, Hogan, I don't feel as though I'm contributing much to the operation, to be perfectly frank."

"Believe me, sir, it helps us more than you know." Hogan was by now firmly convinced that the only chance they had of preventing any more Crittendon-caused damage to this mission was to keep him in plain sight at all times. It might not be pleasant, but it was safer. He hoped.

He finished wiring his section of the bridge and looked down the gangway towards Kinch, who signaled that he was also finished. Then past Kinch to Bluebird several dozen feet further on; she flashed him a thumbs-up as well. He signaled back to the both of them to clear the bridge, then fired a single pistol shot straight up into the air… that would serve as the signal for LeBeau, Carter and Newkirk to lose the sentry in the woods and meet them all back at the rendez-vous point on the hillside, as well as for Tiger to know that everything had gone according to plan and be expecting them. Hogan waited for Kinch and Bluebird to sprint past him and head back into the cover of the trees, then said "Okay, Crittendon, let's go" and started towards the safety of the embankment himself.

Hogan wasn't sure what made him turn around after he'd taken only a few steps. Maybe it was his past association with Crittendon that convinced him that it couldn't possibly be that easy, that something else just _had _to go south… that it was always darkest before the dawn when Crittendon was around, and he sensed that dawn hadn't quite broken yet in this case. But Hogan _did_ turn around, and there was Crittendon… just exactly where he had been told to stand. He hadn't budged an inch. "Are you waiting for me to say 'Simon Says'?" Hogan demanded.

The British colonel was holding his left leg with both hands and pulling for all he was worth. "Blasted boot-heel's caught!" He yanked harder, with no result. "Happened to me once before, passing over a storm drain on the parade ground when I was a cadet… made a bloody fool of myself _that _day, I can tell you…"

And _this_ was something _else _entirely? Leaving him right there occurred to Hogan… briefly… then he swallowed the curse word that had almost made it to his lips and headed back to the fumbling officer. "Of all the…"

Now came the melodrama. "It's all right, Hogan… _leave_ me… this bridge is going to explode any second, I know… go _on_, man; save yourself…"

It wasn't on a _timer_, it was on a _detonator_… and the plunger wouldn't go down until, as per his instructions which everyone _else _had listened to, they were _all_ back at the rendez-vous point. Once again, Crittendon had missed a key aspect of the plan. He was in no danger of blowing up along with the bridge whether he knew it or not, but they were _both _in very _real_ danger of being spotted by that lone sentry still posted above their heads at track level, now that the distracting floor-show down below had been abruptly cancelled. "Don't tempt me." Hogan took a firm hold on Crittendon's boot and pulled as hard as he could, almost succeeding in upending the colonel completely, but the jammed heel didn't budge.

"I say, do have a care…"

"No time." Hogan only had one other idea: this time he grabbed the leg only, and pulled the colonel's foot right out of the boot. "Let's go."

"Oh, good show… should have thought of that on the parade ground."

Hogan gave his superior a push in the desired direction. "_Move_. _Sir_."

What a war. _What_ a _war._

oo 0 oo

One by one the team members reassembled at the rendez-vous point where Tiger waited with the detonator. Kinch was first, then Bluebird. Then LeBeau. "Where is Colonel Hogan?" Tiger asked.

"He was right behind us on the bridge," Kinch said.

Newkirk joined them. "Carter's on his way… where's the colonel?"

"He gave the signal," Tiger insisted, beginning to sound concerned. "I _heard_ it."

Bluebird took up the binoculars and focused on the bridge. She could make out the sentry, but there was no sign of Hogan. "I don't see him."

"He should _be _here by now."

"Something must have happened."

"Like what?"

The same thought occurred to all of them simultaneously. "_Crittendon__…_"

As casually if he'd been answering a page in a hotel lobby, the British colonel appeared in the clearing at that very moment. "Fear not, chaps… all's well."

The extremely annoyed expression on Colonel Hogan's face as he brought up the rear suggested to the rest of them that all wasn't necessarily well, not by a long shot… and they were also pretty sure there must be an entertaining story attached to the fact that the pompous Brit now had only one boot on. But Hogan rolled his eyes and shook his head, and that was enough, at least for the moment. That look meant '_don__'__t __ask_'.

Carter joined the group moments later, completing the head count. "Go ahead, Carter," Hogan invited him, indicating the detonator.

"Can I?" he grinned.

"Might as well finish what you started."

Carter didn't need to be asked twice, not when the chance to make something big and important blow into hundreds of jagged pieces was concerned. He gripped the plunger and sunk it into the detonator box in one smooth motion. A split second later, there was an ear-splitting roar and the night sky was illuminated with a blinding flash that lit up the bits and pieces of flying wreckage that spun through the air in all directions. "Beautiful," Hogan approved as he watched through the binoculars.

"Now they've got a matched set," Kinch nodded.

"Okay, let's get back to camp."

"If you don't mind…" Crittendon spoke up, "I won't be joining you."

_If _they didn't mind? Hogan had all he could do to contain his enthusiasm for the very first one of Crittendon's ideas that he was pretty sure he was going to like. "That's a shame, sir."

"I should return to Stalag 6. I feel I owe those four men something."

"It ain't what he thinks," Newkirk said under his breath to Carter. "But I bet they'll be willin' to collect."

"If you think that's best," nodded Hogan.

"I do," Crittendon affirmed, his voice low and grave. "Duty calls. First Stalag 6, and then who knows… might even be heading back to dear old Blighty. I've oft been told by some of my colleagues operating behind enemy lines that I might be of some little value behind a desk, using the old brainbox for the good of the war effort… perhaps I'll give it a go."

"Yeah, right, whatever you say." Hogan gave a brief, somewhat cursory salute… and to his surprise the Kommandant's voice suddenly rung in his mind, droning _Dis-missed!_. So _this _was how Klink felt when he couldn't stand the sight of Hogan any longer. Hogan made a mental note to be more empathetic about that in the future. It _was _a bad feeling. Bad enough to not even wish it on _Klink_.

Crittendon's own salute was the usual crisp and lengthy gesture, elbow extended and vibrating like a pennant in a strong breeze, held until he was good and ready to drop his hand back down. "I won't forget, Hogan."

"Oh, that's okay… you can forget _all _of it_, _if you want to."

"Never. Well, lads, I'm off." Any one of them could have made an incisive comment at that point, but it might have delayed his departure, and that _no_ one was prepared to risk. "I shall miss you. Carry on." Before rising to depart, Crittendon paused to lay a hand on Bluebird's shoulder. "I do wish _you_ could join my team, Private. Young, ambitious… a bit more seasoning from an old hand such as myself, and there's no telling what you might accomplish."

It wasn't often that Bluebird's face showed abject terror. This was one of those times. "I _can__'__t_." She looked to Hogan for backup. "_Right, _Colonel?"

"Oh, right," Hogan nodded. "Sorry, sir, but Private Byrd's just too valuable to us here… we can't do without her… uh, _him._"

"I understand. But you remember one thing, Private. Mustn't hide your light under a bushel basket."

"Is _that_ what she's got under there, y'think?" Newkirk asked LeBeau, who couldn't contain a chuckle_._

"'Til we meet again." Crittendon took them all in with one final dramatic parting glance, then stepped off into the forest… leading bravely and stoically with his stockinged foot.

Carter pointed in the opposite direction. "Isn't Stalag 6 _west _of here?"

Newkirk jabbed a thumb over his own shoulder. "It is. And dear old Blighty's _that _way… but if he keeps goin' he'll likely hit India in another eight or ten months. An' if he misses that, there's always Hong Kong."

Hogan sighed. "Wrong-Way Crittendon scores again. So much for our favorite village idiot."

Bluebird shook her head. "Oh, he must be competing at _least _at the county or state level by now."

Kinch spoke up with some hesitation. "Colonel, we can't just let him… I mean, can we?"

"Want me to call him back?" Hogan offered.

The response was unanimous. "_No!_"

"Anybody want to go _with _him?" Again, a resounding group _no_. "Okay, then… last one back to camp's a rotten egg."


	12. Chapter 12

Major Hochstetter was not happy. That wasn't unusual. At least the implosion was happening on the other end of the telephone line this time, and not in Klink's office. Hogan stood in front of Klink's desk, listening to the major scream through the earpiece which was a good four or five feet away, and being held at some distance from Klink's ear. He could hear every word, clear as a bell, and he was pretty sure that it even carried to the hidden microphone on the wall, so the boys in the barracks could follow along. Schultz could also hear it perfectly, since he stood, more or less at attention, directly behind the Kommandant.

"Major…" Klink attempted yet again to break into the tirade. "I assure you…"

"_Do __not __assure __me __of __anything, __Klink!_"

"Please, Major…"

"_Do __you __or __do __you __not __have __an __explanation __for __what __happened __to __the __explosives __that __were __being __stored __in __that __bunker_?"

"Ah ha… _there_, Major, I must remind you, that you yourself said that I should have nothing to do with the bunker, that I was responsible only for what goes on _inside _the wire…" Klink struggled to recall any more of what Hochstetter had said to him that day. "That I had more than enough to tax my capabilities right here." That didn't sound good. He was sure it was a direct quote, but it certainly wasn't a flattering one. "Probably what you actually meant was…"

"_Klink, __someone __replaced __that __dynamite __with __useless __fakes! __Half __of __a __division __has __been __wiped __out __because __they __would __have __mustered __up __more __defensive __firepower __by __lighting __birthday __candles! __I __demand __an __explanation!_"

"Are you suggesting that I personally had something to do with it? That _I _took your dynamite?"

"_You__, __or __someone __else __at __Stalag __13!__"_

"There is no one here but me, my guards, and my prisoners. I can assure you that _I_ had nothing whatsoever to do with it. As for my guards, they wear the uniform of the Third Reich with pride, and they are _not_ common thieves."

Schultz took the opportunity to pop open the flask of schnapps on the drinks tray on the sideboard behind the Kommandant, and raised the bottle to his lips. He took a quick swig and swirled it in his mouth while wiping the flask on his sleeve, then swallowed. Hogan gave him a wink. No, not _common _thieves… _uncommon _ones, maybe.

"_That __appears __to __leave __only __your __prisoners_!"

In the barracks, the group standing around listening via the coffee pot had to agree. "_Oui_, he's right… that does leave the prisoners," nodded LeBeau.

"I'll check my pockets," Kinch said.

_"__Specifically,__" _Hochstetter continued, _"__that __leaves __Colonel __Hogan.__"_

"Tiger, would you be a luv and ask the colonel to check '_is_ pockets?" Newkirk asked. "I mean, when he has a minute and all."

Tiger smiled and lowered her gaze. The few moments she might be able to spend with the colonel before she had to leave again would not be spent in any discussion of the contents of his pockets.

_"__You __have __not __heard __the __last __of __this, __Klink!__"_

Klink was unable to get another word out of his mouth before the loud click on the other end of the line indicated that Hochstetter had reached the limit of his patience… patience was a rare commodity for the volatile officer to come by, and he ran out quickly and often. "The nerve of that man…" Klink muttered as he replaced the phone in its cradle.

"Why don't you call him back, sir?" Hogan asked.

"Why would I want to call him back_? _I've already heard enough from him to last me another three or four wars."

"Well, it's obvious, isn't it?"

"What is?"

"_You_ know what happened to his dynamite."

"I had _nothing _to do with any theft of dynamite, Hogan!" Klink countered defensively. "Absolutely _nothing_!"

"I know that, sir. And I know that _you _know that there never _was _any dynamite. I mean, not _really._"

Klink looked completely confused. "There wasn't…?"

"Of course not. Who transported the alleged dynamite to Stalag 13?"

"The Gestapo, of course."

"Right. And who loaded the explosives into the bunker?"

"Obviously, the Gestapo did."

"Don't you get it? It was a set-up right from the start. Hochstetter's own men obviously stole the explosives in transit, figuring to sell them on the black market, and replaced them with the fakes before they even got _into _that bunker, and they figured _you _for the fall guy. Naturally the Major would rather blame you, instead of investigating his own men and creating a lot of embarrassment for himself in front of Himmler. It's very unfair of him, sir."

Klink pressed his thumb against his bottom lip. "I wonder…"

"Or, maybe he even pulled the heist himself. That stuff brings a pretty penny... sorry; _pfennig_... on the black market. He might have his own little racket going on the side, and he wants to blame _you_ to keep the heat off _him._"

"You think that's the answer?"

"There's no other possible explanation. Unless someone stole the explosives right out of a locked and heavily-guarded bunker while he was standing right on top of it." Actually… that was pretty much what _had _happened. Hogan had to work to keep from grinning too broadly. This had been a good score, all right. A _very _good score for the Good Guys. _Top hole_, as Crittendon might have said if he were there. Which, thank goodness, he wasn't.

"All I know is that I never want to hear another word about that bunker again. They'll fill it up, seal it off, and that will be the end of it."

And they could start any time, Hogan thought to himself with still more satisfaction… every last stick of live TNT had already been removed and replaced in their own underground arsenal. They had enough to blow half of western Germany to kingdom come. If they wanted to, they could even open a branch office to supply local Underground efforts… there was more than enough to go around.

"I wonder if I might be allowed to return to the barracks, sir?"

"I don't know what you're doing here anyway." Klink saluted and turned his attention back to the spread of papers on his desk. "Dismissed, Hogan. You get out too, Schultz. I'm very busy."

That suited the heavy-set sergeant perfectly. He gestured for Hogan to precede him, and they walked together through the outer office and down the steps to the compound.

"Colonel Hogan…?"

"What's on your mind, Schultz?"

"Is that what _really _happened to all of the Major's dynamite?"

"Actually, no. What _really _happened to it was…"

"_Please__…__! __Don__'__t _tell me…" Schultz took a couple of deep breaths. "And are the two _frauleins _gone from out of the barracks…?" Before Hogan could open his mouth to answer, Schultz kept going. "_Nein! _Please don't tell me that _either__…_ and that Englander _Oberst_, he is… _nein, _I do _not _want to know!"

Hogan zipped up his jacket. "I'm going back to the barracks, Schultz. You don't need me for this conversation; you've got both sides covered."

oo 0 oo

Things were finally back to normal in Barracks 2.

Almost.

In Hogan's office, the colonel and Tiger were finally in each other's arms. The door was ajar, though, and Hogan knew he would have to do something about that in a minute or two, if things progressed to the point he was hoping they would. "I don't know if I can wait for that candle-light dinner I owe you," he told her softly as he nuzzled her ear. "I'm getting kinda hungry."

To his surprise, she pulled away rather coolly, with a slight pout on her full lips. "I have been meaning to ask you…"

"Ask away… I'll tell you right now, whatever you want, the answer's 'yes'."

"With the war… we do not see one another other often…"

"Not often enough for me, but I'm game to change that if you are. What are you doing Friday night?" He kissed her neck. "And how 'bout Saturday? The war empties out on the weekends, I hear."

It was difficult not to lose her train of thought with the handsome colonel's lips working their way down her throat, but Tiger persisted. "I cannot help but wonder… when I am not here…" She glanced toward the barracks proper. "If there might be… someone else...?"

"Honey, this is a prison camp… who else _is _there?"

She lifted one smooth shoulder. "_La __gamine__… _perhaps_?__"_

"La what?" Then Hogan realized what she was implying but was too polite to say in so many words. "You mean _Bluebird_?" When she nodded, he burst out laughing, and it was several seconds before he found himself with the breath to speak again. "That'd be like taking my sister to the prom!"

"Then… you have no feelings for her?" Tiger pressed, coquettishly fanning her long lashes.

"Sure I do." Hogan smiled at her sudden expression of surprise. "After all… she _is_ one of my best men." He gave her neck another suggestive nuzzle. "Now… what do you say you and I get back to steaming up my eagles…?"

Outside the office, Carter and Kinch played a hand of cards at the table while LeBeau swirled a wooden spoon in the pot on the stove and sifted a few herbs between his fingers to add to the already-tantalizing aroma that arose from it. Newkirk scraped a straight razor down his soapy chin at the mirror above the sink. Bluebird stacked an armload of tin plates in readiness for dinner. At the sound of the colonel's laughter, they all turned towards his office door. "Officers have all the luck, don't they?" Newkirk grumbled.

Carter discarded the eight of hearts. "You know, I _like_ Tiger and all…"

"I'm sure the feeling's mutual, Andrew," Kinch nodded as he added the card to his own hand. "But maybe not _quite_ the same way she likes the Colonel."

"That's _not_ what I mean." Ever the clean-living American boy from the Midwest, Carter actually blushed a little bit at the very thought before continuing. "What I was gonna say is, it's a pretty busy war. We've got a lot to do, what with all the sabotage and keeping the escape route running and stuff, and sometimes I think Tiger gets a little… I dunno… _distracted_."

"I'm all for that type of distraction, mate," Newkirk stated unequivocally. He rinsed the razor under the cold running water and rubbed a threadbare towel across his face and neck. "_Anytime_. And I do mean _any_time, no matter _how _busy the war gets."

"You see what I mean? You _too_." Carter shifted uncomfortably; he felt so awkward even broaching the subject that it was almost a shiver. "All that funny stuff with girls…"

"There ain't nothin' funny about it when you know what you're doin'." Newkirk glanced again towards the nearly-closed office door. "And mark my words, the Colonel knows _exactly _what he's doin'. I just wish now and again he'd give someone else a chance. He's gone and cornered the flippin' market." He held out the shaving mug, still half-full of lather. "Who's next, then? How 'bout you, Hugh? You're a bit scruffy." Bluebird stuck out her tongue at him as she passed by with the stack of tin plates. "You look like a khaki zipper," Newkirk informed her.

"I wouldn't let her near that razor right now if I were you," Kinch chuckled. "Unless you want the closest shave you ever had."

LeBeau set the heavy pot on the table, shooing Kinch and Carter's card game away with his free hand. "Eat now, play later. _Boeuf __bourgignon _is not meatloaf; you don't just make sandwiches out of it when it gets cold." Then he bustled towards the colonel's office door. "_Mademoiselle, __Colonel__… __tout __le __monde __à __table, __s__'__il __vous __plaît__…_"

The barely-open door clicked gently closed just as LeBeau reached up to knock on it. Normally easily-offended whenever someone put any other activity before sampling his cuisine, the Frenchman smiled knowingly and nodded. "It's okay… I understand. _C__'__est __la __guerre._"

THE END

**A/N: **Thanks to all who read! And I appreciate the comments!


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